\\\E UNIVERSE 
 
 JY-SOl^
 
 THE 
 
 FIFTY-CENT DOLLAR. 
 
 A brief history of the financial agitation, legislation 
 
 and condition of the United States, from 1890 
 
 to 1895 ; followed by a catechism 
 
 questions and answers in 
 
 support of what 
 
 precedes. 
 
 -BY- 
 
 NEIL W. CAROTHERS. 
 
 STANDARD' PUBLISHING COMPANY, 
 CHATTANOOGA, TENNESSEE.
 
 COPYRIGHTED IN 1895 
 BY NEIL W. CAROTHERS.
 
 Stack 
 Annex 
 
 5 
 031 
 
 CONTENTS. 
 
 PAGE 
 
 Introduction 5 
 
 Chapter I, The Meaning of Dear Money 11 
 
 Chapter II, Unconditional Repeal of the Sher- 
 
 "man Law 24 
 
 Chapter III, Blessings Flowing from the Un- 
 conditional Repeal of the Sherman Law 39 
 
 Chapter IV, The People now Thinking for 
 
 Themselves 50 
 
 Reply to Critics 73 
 
 2003143
 
 PRESS OF 
 
 MACGOWAN & COOKE, 
 
 CHATTANOOGA, TENN.
 
 INTRODUCTION. 
 
 In 1873 silver was demonetized in the United 
 States ; that is, silver was denied the right to be 
 coined into money at the mints. Some say this 
 legislation was procured surreptitiously and crimi- 
 nally. However this may be, it is at least certain 
 that the real character of the legislation was un- 
 known to a majority of those responsible for it, in- 
 cluding the President himself, General Grant, 
 who approved the act. Neither gold nor silver was 
 then in circulation paper currency being the al- 
 most exclusive circulating medium and it was 
 sometime before the legislation in question attrac- 
 ted public attention and concern. The financial 
 question in this country had previously been ; not 
 how to reduce our money supply, but rather how 
 sufficiently and legitimately to increase it. in order 
 to keep pace with our rapid development and grow- 
 ing commerce. It was far from the minds of the 
 masses to imagine that silver would be demone- 
 tized, and it was correspondingly difficult after- 
 wards for them to believe that it had been done.
 
 THE FIFTY-CENT DOLLAR. 
 
 For a long while the act had but few apologists 
 or defenders. But, despite the terrible panic which 
 followed, .and the protests of the people, through 
 political platforms and otherwise, the first legisla- 
 tion in the direction of the restoration of silver was 
 only a compromise with those influences which had 
 secured its demonetization. It was partially re- 
 stored in 1878, by what was known as the Bland 
 Act. With this, and the confidence of the people 
 that eventually silver would occupy its former 
 place, prosperity returned, and, without substantial 
 interruption, continued until 1890, when the famil- 
 iar law known as the Sherman Act was passed. 
 This legislation, though still a compromise with 
 the contractionists, was understood by most people 
 to be an additional recognition to silver. There 
 soon followed, however, a phenomenal and unprece- 
 dented political condition. 
 
 Close upon the passage of the Sherman Act a 
 majority of the leading newspapers and periodicals 
 of the country, as one great army under the drill 
 and leadership of a general knowing nothing but 
 to command and exact servile obedience, fell into 
 line, and, with clamor almost deafening, marched 
 with solid phalanx in a common war upon silver.
 
 THE FIFTY-CENT DOLLAR. 
 
 We then heard for the first time in this country 
 that there was no such thing as bi-metallism ; that 
 our financial system could no longer stand upon a 
 foundation of both silver and gold, but could only 
 rest upon gold, however narrow that foundation. 
 We were taught the new doctrine that the measure 
 of a dollar's value was not what it would purchase 
 when coined, but what it was worth before becom- 
 ing money ; that money was in no sense the 
 creature of government, but something possessing 
 inherent, intrinsic worth ; that it was not the rep- 
 resentative of real value in other things which sus- 
 tain life and bring comfort and luxury, but pos- 
 sessed value in itself, wholly independent of gov- 
 ernment ; and that this value inhered only in gold. 
 A new construction was forced upon that clause of 
 the constitution which provides that congress shall 
 have power to coin money from gold and silver, and 
 the power to coin it from silver was denied. Those 
 who sincerely believed that silver was as fit a metal 
 as gold for purposes of money (and infinitely more 
 so for the numberless small transactions of daily 
 life) asserted their convictions at the expense of an 
 assault upon their integrity. They were denounced 
 as being repudiators, and dishonest. It was held to
 
 FIFTY-CENT DOLLAR. 
 
 be plebeian to advocate anything but a gold stan- 
 dard. This of course tended to hold in line all aris- 
 tocrats, and gained numberless recruits from 
 among those who had not been so classed before, 
 but who aspired to be.. It was a golden opportunity 
 not wasted. 
 
 Common people were taught that the money 
 question was beyond their ken in every particular, 
 that it was an abstruse and exact science some- 
 thing never before taught by human experience, his- 
 tory or the schools. Aristotle had said, more than 
 2000 years before, that "money exists not by nature, 
 but by law" and this had not been seriously con- 
 troverted during the intervening centuries, until 
 dawn of the period mentioned. 
 
 
 
 The slogan of this modern invasion was " a 
 sound currency and an honest dollar," and eternal 
 war upon the "cheap dollar." As no honest man 
 could favor a dishonest dollar, and no patriot or 
 just man could advocate anything short of a sound 
 currency, this war cry seemed to embody the very 
 soul of patriotism. It captured all that class who 
 leave others to do their thinking, and millions who 
 had previously entertained well defined views on 
 the money question abandoned it wholly to others.
 
 THE FIFTY-CENT DOLLAR. 
 
 The conflict, though severe, proved an unequal 
 one, and the majority went down before the organ- 
 ized, equipped and disciplined minority. Strong 
 
 + 
 
 men succumbed to the inevitable, while weaker 
 ones and time-servers deserted to the enemy's 
 ranks. As the smoke of battle cleared away, vic- 
 tory was seen perching upon the banner of mono- 
 metallism in America. We are today beholding 
 and reaping its benign fruits ! Monarchies, under 
 
 r, 
 
 like influences, had seen similar triumphs, but few 
 had believed that such fate awaited the New World. 
 
 Is the temporary victory just described to re- 
 main our portion? The renewed conflict, in which 
 the defeated are now the aggressors, will determine 
 that question. 
 
 The four chapters comprising this volume were 
 written for newspaper publication, in which form 
 they originally appeared. With a few changes 
 they are now reproduced, each chapter bearing the 
 date of the time at which it was written. The 
 reader is left to determine their soundness or un- 
 soundness as practical thoughts on a circulating 
 medium and a financial policy. To the mind of 
 the author they portray the various stages and final 
 results of the recent financial struggle in this
 
 10 THE FIFTY-CENT DOLLAR. 
 
 country. And they are now offered to the public 
 with the conviction in the author's mind that the 
 question discussed is fraught with consequences 
 equal in gravity to the first struggle of this coun- 
 try for independence. . N. W. 0.
 
 CHAPTER I. 
 
 THE MEANING OF DEAR MONEY. 
 
 September, 1892. 
 
 The readiness with which the American people 
 are now misled and deceived by every argument 
 against and assault upon the cheap dollar, so-called, 
 is fraught with infinite possibilities for harm. 
 However far beyond the reach of the masses may 
 be a sufficiency of high priced dollars, (again 
 using a term which is misleading), yet millions of 
 them are now joining loyally and lustily in the 
 clamor against the "cheap dollar." It is a term of 
 derision in which people indulge without stopping 
 to reflect that there is no such thing as a cheap 
 dollar or high priced dollar, but that these are only 
 relative terms which mean^that those things for 
 which a dollar is exchanged are either high priced 
 or low priced. A dollar is an absolute thing so 
 much silver or gold, circulating as a medium of 
 exchange by decree of government ; the yard stick, 
 so to speak, by which the value of other things is
 
 12 THE FIFTY-CENT DOLLAR. 
 
 determined. Without government we could have 
 no such thing as a dollar. 
 
 A cheap dollar simply means a high price for 
 that which is exchanged for it. The laborer who 
 gets a dollar for a day's work pays twice as much 
 for that dollar as he would have paid had he gotten 
 two dollars for the same day's labor. In other 
 words, he gets a high priced dollar when he gets 
 only one instead of two for a day's work. It is 
 right difficult to perceive, therefore, why the 
 laborer should join in the crusade against the al- 
 leged cheap dollar, when to him it simply means 
 more money for his day's work. 
 
 When a farmer sells a given quantity of pro- 
 duce for a dollar, he receives a higher priced dollar 
 for his product than if he had gotten two dollars 
 for it; but that dollar will go no further toward 
 liquidating a mortgage which might hang over his 
 farm a mortgage created perhaps when money 
 was cheaper, or rather, when property was higher. 
 
 If $10,000 will buy a given piece of property, 
 the dollars come twice as high, or, what is equiva- 
 lent, the property goes twice as cheap as would 
 have been the case had it required $20,000 to pur- 
 chase the same property. And should the property
 
 THE FIFTY-' 'E.\T DOLL AH. 13 
 
 owner owe $10,000, he would of course be cleaned 
 up on selling for that sum, while by selling for 
 $20,000 there would be a surplus in pocket of $10-. 
 000. It would be needless to try and persuade him 
 that he was worse off for having these ten thousand 
 " cheap dollars." 
 
 The merchant who has marked down the price 
 of his goods, because dollars are unusually high 
 and hard to reach, and stands idly behind his 
 counter trembling before the spectre of impending 
 bankruptcy, might be better off if dollars were a lit- 
 tle cheaper and more readily exchangeable for his 
 goods. And might not the manufacturer, who has 
 found that the higher priced the dollar, the less 
 inclined it is to seek his wares, find it profitable to 
 check the increasing value of a dollar? 
 
 It is needless to proceed further on this line, to 
 show that every class whose stock in trade is some- 
 thing else than money, as labor and skill, products 
 of the field or mine, merchandise, manufactures, 
 or real estate, is interested in a dollar that does not 
 and will not increase in purchasing power. And 
 what is true of each class taken seperately is of 
 course true of the whole. Manifestly, therefore, 
 only those are interested in a high-priced dollar
 
 14 THE FIFTY-CENT DOLLAR. 
 
 whose possessions consist wholly or largely in dol- 
 lars, or their equivalent, promises from others to 
 pay dollars. It is, after all, simply a question of 
 what one's earthly possessions consist in ; and of 
 the two general classes into which the whole people 
 are divided on this question (not in sentiment 
 necessarily, but in fact) it is unnecessary to say 
 which constitutes the overwhelming majority. 
 
 The money lender, constituting one in a hun- 
 dred, perhaps, of the whole number, is clearly and 
 justly entitled, from the standpoint of self interest, 
 to contend for the high-priced dollar ; but his in- 
 terests, in the very nature of things, are opposed to 
 those of the remaining ninety-nine. Henry Clews, 
 an opulent banker of New York City, insults the 
 intelligence of the American people, therefore, 
 whenever he essays to instruct them as to their in- 
 terests on finance unless perchance he should ad- 
 vise them against his own interests. 
 
 The wealth of the country is estimated, accord- 
 ing to the census of 1890, to be about $1000 to every 
 individual. The circulating medium per capita, ac- 
 cording to the highest estimates, is about $25 ; that 
 is, the ratio between money and all forms of prop- 
 erty, according to these figures, is one to forty.
 
 THE FIFTY-CENT DOLLAR. 15 
 
 When, therefore, the purchasing power of a dollar 
 increases one per cent, or in any other ratio, prop- 
 erty suffers a corresponding loss forty times as 
 great. This, perhaps, would be of no consequence 
 if there were no creditor and debtor classes, and 
 the circulating medium were distributed with all 
 forms of property, in uniform proportions of one to 
 forty. But such is not, and of necessity cannot be, 
 the condition. This being true, it is nothing short 
 of a crime for a government, after its people have 
 adjusted themselves to a circulating medium, to 
 legislate so as to contract the currency, or to lend 
 encouragement to those who are powerful enough 
 and selfish enough to bring about the same result. 
 The first crime in that direction was committed in 
 this country in 1873, when silver was quietly denied 
 free coinage. The financial condition of the country 
 today is a demonstration of the fact that the first 
 restriction upon silver was a financial failure, and 
 that no expedient since (including the Sherman 
 Bill) has been equal to remedying the evil. 
 
 Inflation of the currency no sane and honest 
 man would advocate ; but it is equally true that an 
 undue estimate of the dollar drives it from trade 
 and produces commercial paralysis.
 
 16 THE FIFTY-CENT DOLLAR. 
 
 Free coinage of silver is as much needed to 
 keep the existing supply of currency moving as it 
 is to replenish that supply. Millions of dollars are 
 now lying idle in the metropolitan banks of the 
 country, while industries and trade throughout 
 the land are languishing and suffering. The intelli- 
 gence of the country is constantly insulted with 
 the statement that so many millions of dollars are 
 now lying idle in the bajiks of New York city and 
 can be borrowed at low rates of interest ; from which 
 the argument is drawn that money is now cheap. 
 Nine hundred and ninety-nine out of a thousand 
 of the people are not in condition to borrow that 
 money ; but they have other things of value which 
 they are powerless to exchange for it, and which it 
 would "be possible to do but for the fact that the 
 money is not cheap. 
 
 It is poor comfort to a man, starving for a 
 drink of water, to tell him that there is a cast 
 iron, steel-bound tank near by, containing a mil- 
 lion gallons, but which he is powerless either to 
 reach or to open. There is no scarcity of water, 
 but as to him it is beyond all price. 
 
 The value of money is no more determined by 
 what it will loan for, than the value of a horse or a
 
 THE FIFTY-CENT DOLLAR. 17 
 
 pocket knife may be determined in the same way. 
 A dollar's value is ascertained by what it will 
 purchase. 
 
 But would free coinage remedy the evil? It 
 would, if we accept as true the cry of the goldites, 
 that free coinage wonld create cheaper dollars ; and 
 that proposition every one is ready to admit, with 
 a proper qualification upon the term ; that is, 
 that a cheaper dollar means a higher price for 
 what it buys. Dollars that have no capacity to 
 increase in value hunt investment and develop- 
 ment, and create activity. High priced dollars, 
 finding nothing so inviting as to remain intact, or 
 to be loaned for more dollars, shun investment and 
 enterprise. It is very true that when a man has 
 need to borrow, it is to his advantage to do so at 
 low rate of interest ; but the fact that millions of 
 dollars are lying idle for purposes of lending, and 
 not for investment, is no evidence of prosperity, 
 and is only an advantage to the few who are in 
 reach of that money. 
 
 President Harrison, to mislead the masses 
 whether deliberately or unwittingly said, on being 
 notified of his recent renomination, that the first 
 mission on which a "cheap dollar" would start out
 
 18 THE FIFTY-CENT DOLLAR. 
 
 would be to pay some poor laborer for his day's 
 work ! He should have known, perhaps did know, 
 that high-priced dollars are not the kind that are 
 in search of a laborer's toil, but are rather with- 
 drawn from everything that employs and renumer- 
 ates labor. If this is not true how does it happen, 
 as an historical fact, that in every age and in every 
 land, we find idleness and want just in proportion 
 as labor is cheap and the money received for it 
 high-priced. Go to those countries where one 
 dollar will buy a week's labor, and you find idle- 
 ness, squalor and misery in corresponding ratio 
 to the high price at which that dollar has sold. 
 
 Much prejudice is felt toward the so-called 
 cheap dollar because people are taught to think of 
 it as they do a cheap hat, or an indifferent article 
 of food. They forget that the value of a dollar is 
 not intrinsic, but extrinsic and artificial. It can- 
 not serve the purpose of food, raiment or shelter; 
 but the greater the facility with which these need- 
 ful things will exchange for it, the better. 
 
 Another fruitful source of delusion on this 
 question is the sad memory of Confederate money, 
 so-called. In the first place it was not money, but 
 a remote promise to become money, made by an
 
 THE FIFTY-CENT DOLLAR. 19 
 
 arbitrary government not established as such be- 
 fore the world, but fighting for existence. The use 
 of it as money was little more than gambling in 
 futures, and as a circulating medium it was simply 
 multiplied in direct proportion to its uncertainty. 
 
 A government's money is just as stable as that 
 government no more, no less. And an assault 
 upon any form of our money is an assault upon 
 the government itself. We had tories during the 
 Revolution who truckled to England, and were a 
 menace to this country ; and the present war upon 
 silver in the United States had its origin in the 
 same spirit, and means the same enmity. 
 
 Something more than a century ago the United 
 States (not then in existence as such) made a ven- 
 ture the most hazardous on the one hand, and the 
 most successful on the other known to the world's 
 history. It declared for a republic, wholly in 
 repudiation of, and dissimilar to the monarchies 
 and aristocracies of Europe. Afterwards we went 
 even so far as to hold that it would be an affront to 
 the United States for Europe to attempt to engraft 
 her peculiar policies of government upon any of the 
 countries of America, and by this the Monroe 
 doctrine we have proudly stood for three-quarters
 
 THE FIFTY-CENT DOLLAR. 
 
 of a century. European governments were then, 
 and are now, founded upon the doctrine that the 
 rights of the classes the few are superior to 
 those of the masses, and of this general doctrine 
 their financial legislation and policy have always 
 partaken. As a result the great mass of European 
 wealth is in the hands of a comparative few a 
 condition which has never been, and will never be, 
 the result wholly of natural laws unaided by arti- 
 ficial or human laws. What England did, there- 
 fore, pursuant to her peculiar policy, to debase 
 silver, and what she forced other European coun- 
 tries to do in the same direction, by reason of her 
 relations to and dominance over them, was hardly 
 a token that we should follow suit. 
 
 If a silver dollar is now worth a gold dollar 
 (and every one knows it is, since they pass current 
 alike, in and out of bank) while^the silver bullion 
 entering into the dollar sells for less than a dollar, 
 how can it possibly be that increasing the value of 
 silver bullion, by making its coinage free, would 
 reduce the relative value of a silver dollar? If so, 
 we have this statement in the rule of three : 
 Sixty-nine cents worth of silver is to a good dollar, 
 as 100 cents is to a bad dollar! The truth of the
 
 THE FIFTY-CENT DOLLAR. 21 
 
 whole matter is simply this : Free coinage of 
 silver would cheapen the silver dollar and gold 
 dollar alike. 
 
 Another device to deceive the people is in 
 constantly speaking of gold as the more precious 
 metal of the two. This is undeniably true in the 
 fact that it exists, or is supposed to exist, in smaller 
 quantities. But much smaller quantity is used to 
 make a dollar. Is a gold dollar more precious than 
 a silver dollar? Gold dollars are so little seen or 
 heard of in ordinary commercial transactions, that 
 the average person hardly knows their capacity 
 from actual experience. But why talk of the 
 sixty-nine cent silver dollar if a gold dollar cannot 
 secure it for less than 100 cents? 
 
 Uninfluenced by legislation the price of bull- 
 ion, whether gold or silver,. would be governed like 
 any other commodity, by the natural law of supply 
 and demand. But when an artificial demand is 
 created by legislation, for one and not for the other, 
 there is no operation of this natural law. Abandon 
 the use of gold and silver as money, and their in- 
 trinsic value for other purposes would soon be de- 
 termined, under this law of supply and demand. 
 Such value will never be determined, however, so
 
 THE FIFTY-CENT DOLLAR. 
 
 long as they are used for purposes of money. 
 There is no such thing as the intrinsic value of a 
 dollar. The instrinsic value of a bushel of wheat, 
 or a coat, lies in its use in its consumption. To 
 make a dollar available we must part with it. 
 
 All legislation with reference to a commodity 
 out of which mony is made affects the price of 
 that commodity favorably or unfavorably just as 
 the legislation is favorable or unfavorable. If the 
 people would keep these simple truths in mind, it 
 would be impossible to mislead them by decrying 
 silver on account of its alleged market price a 
 market price controlled by legislation ! 
 
 It has been stated that our money, whether 
 gold or silver, is as stable and good as the govern- 
 ment that created it. But the advocate of a gold 
 standard replies: "Suppose our government should 
 fail?" The tories feared the same thing in 1776, 
 when this country set out to establish a govern- 
 ment ; hence the loyalty of the tory to England 
 and her behests. 
 
 Should our government pass away, whatever 
 gold we may possess would, as bullion, be probably 
 worth more than our silver, by reason of the 
 special legislative favors gold has secured abroad.
 
 THE FIFTY-CENT DOLLAR. 
 
 But it will not then be distributed among the peo- 
 ple. It will be just where it is now either in the 
 hands or control of the few whose selfish designs 
 are now being carried out in the present demand 
 for a contracted currency. 
 
 Are we now prepared, allowing that such time 
 might come, to place the great superstructure of 
 our commerce, manufactures and yet undeveloped 
 resources, upon gold as the only basis of financial 
 credit ; or shall we let silver share the weight? 
 That is the issue, however much it may be ob- 
 scured. We know that the cry of hard times is 
 abroad in the land, while there is no scarcity of 
 the wherewithal to be fed and clothed. If vicious 
 financial legislation, (heretofore enacted and yet 
 promised for the future) be not the cause of the 
 trouble, then the government is powerless to do for 
 its people what governments are established for, 
 and we had better return to a primitive state. 
 Governments were never designed to create want 
 in the midst of plenty.
 
 CHAPTER II. 
 
 UNCONDITIONAL KEPEAL OF THE SHER- 
 MAN LAW. 
 
 JULY, 1893. 
 
 Despite the fact that there are already thous- 
 ands in every community who are suffering from a 
 contracted, or rather an inactive currency, there 
 are few who, now, are not ready to throw up their 
 hats and proclaim aloud for a yet higher-priced 
 dollar. To my mind it seems that we have to no 
 purpose seen factories shut down, corporations and 
 firms retire from the field of activity into the 
 shades of hopeless bankruptcy, individuals ruined, 
 and idleness multiplied to a degree never before 
 seen in this land ; because, as I contemplate! the 
 situation, this havoc is due to the relentless war 
 upon silver, begun in 1890, which has by this time 
 almost whipped all opposition into submission. 
 
 The same influence (call it Wall street, Lom- 
 bard street, the money power, or what not) that 
 brought about the demonetization of silver in 1873 
 at which time the struggle on this question really
 
 THE FIFTY-CENT DOLLAR. 
 
 began is now getting in its finishing work in an 
 organized effort to convince the people that in the 
 total annihilation of silver as money, lies their sal- 
 vation. And the success with which this argument 
 is made lies in the fact that coincident with the 
 present financial crisis is the existence and opera- 
 tion of the Sherman act. Great care is taken, 
 however, not to tell the people that the Sherman 
 act is a very different thing from the free coinage, 
 of silver. In other words, it is argued that we now 
 substantially have free coinage of silver, and there- 
 fore relief will come only in the absolute demoneti- 
 zation of silver. 
 
 The stamping, by government authority, of a 
 given amount of metal as a dollar is one thing ; an*d 
 the goverment's becoming a mercantile establish- 
 ment for dealing in that metal and that, too, 
 aftef first limiting the demand for it is an entirely 
 different thing. Therefore, the only consistent and 
 logical demand, along with that for the repeal of 
 the Sherman act (which is now a universally ad- 
 mitted evil) is the further demand that it be sub- 
 stituted with the free coinage of silver. 
 
 The Honorable Henry Hucks Gibbs, once gov- 
 ernor of the Bank of England, and now President
 
 26 THE FIFTY-CENT DOLLAR. 
 
 of the Bi-metallic League of Great Britain, in a 
 recent exhaustive argument in the Forum, for the 
 free coinage of silver in England as well as 
 America, said substantially that he had sought in 
 vain for evidence that money of a yellow metal 
 possessed more virtue "as" such than money of a 
 white metal. I am willing to be charged with the 
 some ignorance as that confessed by the Honorable 
 Mr. Gibbs. Just here it might be remarked as a 
 fact of history, that the demonetization of silver 
 in England, occurring three-quarters of a century 
 ago, is today and.has ever been, an endless source 
 of agitation and irritation in that country, and 
 many of her ablest statesmen and patriots are now 
 struggling to restore silver there to free coinage. 
 But history teaches us further that England de- 
 monetized silver .because she had become the 
 greatest creditor nation on earth. The world was 
 in debt to her, hence it may have been to her 
 selfish interest, or at least to the interest of her 
 creditor classes, to demonetize silver and thus mul- 
 tiply the purchasing power of that indebtedness. 
 America enjoys no such distinction. We are a 
 nation of debtors, and far from fully developed. 
 So our reason for totally demonetizing silver if
 
 THE FIFTY-CENT DOLLAR. 
 
 that is to be our fate must be a different one from 
 that which controlled England. 
 
 That England struck a recent blow at silver in 
 her Indian provinces, may be ascribed to very 
 much the same cause that brought about demoneti- 
 zation at home. India is largely indebted to the 
 wealthy classes of England, and the former having 
 now become tempting fruit, is being plucked. 
 
 The time was, and not so long ago, when a 
 helpless debtor could be imprisoned at the will 
 of his creditor. Advancing civilization and Christ- 
 ianity revolted at this, and imprisoment for debt 
 became a thing of the past. But the humane 
 policy of the law toward the debtor did not stop 
 here. The debtor when exhausted of his re- 
 sources down to the scant necessaries of life, 
 was permitted to retain them against the ex- 
 ecution of a creditor, even if that creditor were 
 the state itself. This order of things seems 
 now to be suspended. Only those are loyal now 
 who, at the behests of the contractionists, talk 
 lustily in the interest of the preferred classes, and 
 cry aloud for "a sound currency and an honest dol- 
 lar ;" forgetting that the most dishonest, cruel and 
 oppressive of all things is the dollar which costs the
 
 28 THE FIFTY-CENT DOLLAR. 
 
 debtor a greater sacrifice of property or labor, at 
 any given time, than it would have cost when 
 borrowed on promise to payin future. 
 
 If any proposition is capable of demonstration, 
 the power of this government independent of all 
 others to control its decrees in reference to the 
 money provided for its people, is demonstrated in 
 the fact that the silver dollar is worth a gold dollar 
 for all purposes, while the silver comprising the 
 dollar can be bought for 60 cents. But wise men 
 tell us that this is due to the grovernment promise 
 and the redeemability of silver in gold. The an- 
 swer to this ever repeated statement is, that it is 
 utterly false. The government makes no promise 
 when it coins a given amount of silver and stamps 
 it as a dollar. Nor is a silver dollar, by virtue of 
 law, redeemable in a gold dollar. A silver certifi- 
 cate which is a government note for silver bullion, 
 is redeemable in coin gold or silver at the option 
 or convenience of the government; but a silver 
 dollar is redeemable in nothing. It stands upon 
 its own merits, or the merits of the government, or 
 both, as one may choose to view it. The truth is, 
 the silver dollar stands today 60 cents on so-called 
 intrinsic value, and 40 cents on the fiat of the gov-
 
 THE FIFTY-CENT DOLLAR. 
 
 eminent ; and according to the decisions of the 
 Supreme Court of the United States it could stand 
 zero as to intrinsic value and a hundred cents on 
 the fiat of the government, and still be as good as 
 the gold dollar. Does this mean that we should 
 have fiat money and be done with it? The free 
 coinage of silver no more means fiat money than 
 does the free coinage of gold. Every intelligent 
 person with honesty will admit that gold would 
 suffer in price should the nations of the earth dis- 
 card it wholly or partially as money. The fact 
 that the producer of silver will, under a restricted 
 demand for his product, take 60 cents for what 
 coins into a dollar, no more proves that sum to be a' 
 liberal return for the labor and capital expended, 
 than 6 cents a pound for cotton proves that the 
 labor producing it has been well rewarded at that 
 price. Under unfavorable conditions labor will 
 accept one dollar for its service, where, were the 
 conditions more favorable, it might get two. No 
 interest is paid on labor, and it accepts what it 
 can get. 
 
 Until the recent movement against silver in 
 India, we heard constantly that the low price of 
 silver bullion was in no way due to its use as money ;
 
 THE FIFTY-CENT DOLLAR. 
 
 but when India demonetized silver it fell immedi- 
 ately and greatly in price. It will continue to fall 
 until the present tide against it in this country is 
 reversed if it shall ever be. 
 
 This latter day clamor about the intrinsic, in- 
 herent and independent virtue in and value of the 
 gold dollar which few ever see or handle is as 
 veritable a craze (where knavery is not at work) as 
 was that of the Crusaders, who went forth to whip 
 the world into Christianity. Why, less than fifty 
 years ago Germany and Austria demonetized gold ! 
 Later on, having in the meantime remonetized gold, 
 Germany demonetized silver, in order to render 
 'more valuable to herself and more burdensome to 
 France the payment by the latter to the former of 
 $1,000,000,000 as the penalty for defeat in war. 
 Yet France, by reason of her pursuit of a more lib- 
 eral financial policy an expanding rather than a 
 contracting circulating medium advanced and 
 prospered incomparably more during the payment 
 of this thousand million of dollars than Germany 
 did while receiving it. Germany lost during the 
 fifteen years succeeding her demonetization of sil- 
 ver 1,500,000 of her people by emigration to other 
 countries, while the people of France remained at
 
 THE FIFTY-CENT DOLLAR. si 
 
 home, prosperous and happy. 
 
 But the goldbug says triumphantly that France 
 is not now opening her mints- to free coinage of 
 silver. 
 
 France, with an area smaller than the State of 
 Texas, has a population nearly equal to two-thirds 
 that of the United States ; the entire territory and 
 all her resources highly developed, and nearly two 
 hundred persons to the square mile. The United 
 States has less than twenty-five persons to the square 
 mile, and is yet undeveloped as to the larger part 
 of its territory. France has about fifteen dollars in 
 silver per capita, and yet the monometallists tell us 
 that our present supply of about half that amount 
 would be increased at the cost of America's credit 
 and prosperity! The running of our mints at full 
 capacity for ten years without interruption would 
 not bring our silver circulation to a per capita 
 equal to that of France to-day say nothing of our 
 growth in the meantime. 
 
 Can it be possible that a continuation of the 
 war upon silver, to its complete annihilation, will 
 restore prosperity? In the light of our fruitful 
 harvests for years past, and our absolute exemption 
 from pestilence, famine or war, surely no argument
 
 THE FIFTY-CENT DOLLAR. 
 
 against silver is furnished by comparing the present 
 unhappy condition of our people with the prosper- 
 ous state of the country a few years ago, when the 
 war of extermination began. The present demor- 
 alization of all prices, trade, development and en- 
 terprise, coming hand in hand with the prospect of 
 dearer money, is certainly no argument for the con- 
 summation of that prospect into a reality. 
 
 Those who contend for the free coinage of sil- 
 ver are charged with responsibility for the present 
 inactivity of money, because, as is alleged, the 
 country is threatened with cheap money. Would a 
 sane man hoard money because he feared it was 
 going to become cheap? Would he not rather 
 hasten to convert it into anything and everything 
 at present low prices? The hoarding is with refer- 
 ence to no particular kind of money, but every 
 dollar is held back alike. No ; money is hoarded 
 to-day not so much because of the small quantity 
 in existence, but because of the prospect that silver 
 will be totally dishonored by the government, and 
 the consequent purchasing power of a dollar will 
 continue to increase. Happily there is no fear that 
 the government will confiscate any of the silver 
 already coined ; hence every dollar is worth a hun-
 
 THE FIFTY-CENT DOLLAR. 33 
 
 dred cents of any other dollar. But it is sought to 
 force the redemption of all silver certificates in 
 gold alone. When that shall be accomplished the 
 bond mill will be ready to grind. 
 
 Why did not the election of Mr. Cleveland in 
 November, '92, reverse the current of disaster and 
 ruin, if it be true that an encouraging prospect for 
 the final overthrow of silver is a token of better 
 times? Certainly it would be difficult to find in 
 this broad land one more unalterably opposed to 
 silver than he. Yet the fact stares us in the face, 
 that since his election the spectre of hard times 
 has traveled with accelerated speed throughout the 
 land. It would seem that stubborn facts should 
 count for more on the one hand, than those argu- 
 ments on the other, which content themselves with 
 denouncing silver as stuff, and those who advocate 
 its coinage as cranks and Idiots. 
 
 The entire silver currency of this country is 
 hardly equal to the expenses of the government for 
 one year ; it is barely three times the amount paid 
 annually by the government in the form of pen- 
 sions alone. 
 
 The platform on which Mr. Cleveland was 
 elected, and to which he avowed implicit loyalty,
 
 34 THE FIFTY-CENT DOLL A R. 
 
 declared for the repeal of the Sherman act, and de- 
 nounced it as a cowardly makeshift of which its 
 authors should be ashamed. It did not stop there, 
 but with equal force demanded the indiscriminate 
 recognition by the government of both silver and 
 gold as money. It is true that platforms are often 
 contrived to catch votes, but elections are only won 
 by confidence on the part of the people that pledges 
 contained in the platforms will be executed. 
 
 Want of confidence is a trite expression that is 
 constantly used to explain the present embarrass- 
 ment of the people ; but is not this alleged want of 
 confidence rather an abiding faith that a dollar in 
 the hands of its owner is safer unemployed and un- 
 invested, in the light of constantly declining prices? 
 Is it not, after all, a pure matter of calculation and 
 business, and a result designed from the beginning? 
 It cannot be a want of confidence in the silver dol- 
 lar, as against a gold or paper dollar. That sort of 
 distrust could only be expressed in an effort to get 
 rid of silver dollars, and in their passing at a dis- 
 count as a medium of exchange. Anything in 
 which there is a lack of confidence necessarily goes 
 for less on the market than something else of the 
 same kind that is secure against such distrust.
 
 THE FIFTY-CENT DOLLAR. 35 
 
 People hadn't confidence in Confederate money ; 
 as a result it was constantly on the go, and at a -dis- 
 count commensurate with the distrust. 
 
 If people would but apply more common sense 
 to the question of a circulating medium, and less 
 jargon of the Henry Clews type, they would fare 
 much better. We are given the shadow for the 
 substance. All see and admit that a double stand- 
 ard here, with a gold standard in the principal 
 countries of Europe, would create inconvenience 
 and loss in the matter of international banking and 
 commerce, and in foreign travel ; but is the gain 
 from this source, whether great or small, to be 
 counted against the prosperity of the American 
 people as a whole? Our foreign commerce is about 
 5 per cent. ; our domestic commerce the remaining 
 95 per cent. Which should we look to first? In 
 order to cultivate an animal's tail, we must culti- 
 vate the animal, not the tail. 
 
 The genius of our government lies in our defi- 
 ance of and departure from the governments and 
 customs of the old world, and in the power to sus- 
 tain ourselves in that independence. Something 
 more than a hundred years ago, with a population 
 less than that of several of our States at the pres-
 
 36 THE FIFTY-CENT DOLL A II. 
 
 ent day, we challenged England, whose ways we 
 didn't like, and after vanquishing her, successfully 
 embarked upon a form of government and a polit- 
 ical system untried and unknown before. Shall we 
 now reverse our policy^ and begin taking our cues 
 from a country that has not even yet repudiated 
 the divine right of kings? We have boasted, from 
 the platform, the stage, and even the pulpit, that 
 we are the greatest nation and have the greatest 
 government on earth. Then let us not belie our 
 boasting. It is conceded on all sides that the prob- 
 lem would be solved if only England would join 
 us in bi-metalism. Should we thus cower like gen- 
 tle lambs at the feet of John Bull? 
 
 England will never join America in bi-metal- 
 ism. America's debt alone to England is more than 
 all the gold coin of the world, and the world's in- 
 debtedness to England is about three times the gold 
 coin of the world. This debt, when counted in gold 
 alone, means twice as much property as when 
 counted in gold and silver the world's money sup- 
 ply of the two metals being about equal. Can 
 England be depended upon to surrender half her 
 spoils? On the other hand, shall we surrender to 
 her financial dictation, and finally yield to a tri-
 
 THE FIFTY-CENT DOLLAR. 87 
 
 umph over us which she was powerless to accom- 
 plish by the sword ? 
 
 But the monometalist says that England will 
 not require all this debt of us at one time ! That 
 is true ; England is' wiser than the man in the fable, 
 who killed the goose in order to get all the golden 
 eggs at once. 
 
 Our government is founded upon a great in- 
 strument called the Constitution ; that Constitution 
 provides for the coining of money from gold and 
 silver. Our debts to England, to the world, to each 
 other, are payable undec that provision of the Con- 
 stitution. The effort to pervert it in this regard 
 did not have its origin with the people. And no 
 man in this land has ever been, or could have been, 
 or could ever be elected President on a platform 
 demanding the demonetization of silver. 
 
 With silver remonetized, England would not 
 even give us time to ask her what she is going to do 
 about it, but would hasten over here with some of 
 her idle money, in order to take advantage of the 
 rise of prices that would inevitably follow. Eng- 
 lish gold would come this way, and ours would 
 cease to go that way ; for if the Englishman has 
 one characteristic more conspicuous than all the
 
 THE FIFTY-CENT DOLLAR. 
 
 rest, it is the zest with which he strikes a market 
 on advancing prices, and gets out of a market when 
 prices are falling.
 
 CHAPTER III. 
 
 BLESSINGS FLOWING FROM THE UNCONDI- 
 TIONAL REPEAL OF THE SHERMAN LAW. 
 
 DECEMBER, 1893. 
 
 A question that millions of 'the American peo- 
 ple are now asking, and asking in vain, is, What 
 and where are the benefits to them so devoutly 
 promised from the unconditional repeal of the pur- 
 chasing clause of the Sherman act? The word un- 
 conditional is the significant one in the inquiry ; 
 for all were agreed that the law in question was 
 vicious. Those who would strike down the last 
 vestige of legislation recognizing silver as one of 
 the two metals fit to furnish the basis of our cur- 
 rency, and who would thus consummate the war 
 upon that metal, were feverishly anxious to see the 
 law go. The opposite class those who felt that 
 silver possessed every inherent quality as a preci- 
 ous metal rendering it suitable for coinage into 
 money, and that it had undergone no change since 
 the foundation of our government making it unfit 
 for such use were equally anxious to destroy a law
 
 40 THE FI FT Y-r A'AT DOLL A Jl 
 
 which made of that metal a commodity, providing 
 for its purchase in a market artificially created 
 (that is, created by statute) and limited so as to 
 bear down its price and debase it, thus bringing it 
 into disrepute as a money metal. 
 
 The history of the world perhaps furnishes no 
 example of greater ability and earnestness than 
 that displayed on Koth sides of this question by our 
 representatives in Congress, when the same was re- 
 cently before them for determination. And while 
 there is no disposition to call in question the mo- 
 tives prompting any of those representatives, the 
 fact remains that the majority in Congress repre- 
 sented a minority on the outside ; for the issue was 
 between that limited class on the one hand, whose 
 possessions consist in money, or promises (from 
 others) to pay money, and, on the other hand, that 
 overwhelming majority, whether debtors or not, 
 whose commodity in the business of life consists 
 not in money, but in something to exchange for 
 money, whether that something be labor, merchan- 
 dise, professional skill, or property; all those, in 
 other words, whose very financial life depends upon 
 a freely circulating medium of exchange, and who 
 are therefore more concerned in advancing the
 
 THE FIFTY-CENT DOLLAR. 41 
 
 price of and demand for their own commodity. than 
 in the increased purchasing power of the dollar fo'r 
 which that commodity is offered in exchange. 
 
 The trouble with the latter class has been their 
 inability to see that high priced dollars (which they 
 didn't have) simply meant a correspondingly low 
 price for what they did have. They persisted in 
 thinking that both ends of the see-saw could go up 
 at the same time. Hence a great majority of the 
 people now find themselves entrapped with still 
 further legislation in the direction of a contracting 
 currency, or dearer money ; which all written his- 
 tory and human experience have shown to be' dis- 
 astrous to the masses, and beneficial only to the 
 few. This is true, regardless of what may justly 
 and truthfully be said in the opposite direction, 
 against an inflated, fictitious currency. 
 
 The Honorable Josiah Patterson, who has of 
 late become the great Southern apostle in the cru- 
 
 
 
 sade against silver, took occasion recently to say in 
 substance (if correctly reported) that he had most 
 earnestly studied the works of all the great authors 
 on finance, and with one accord he found their tes- 
 timony to be that no greater calamity could befall 
 a land than to supply its people with cheap money !
 
 THE FIFTY-CENT DOLLAR. 
 
 If much time and labor were expended in searching 
 tiie books to discover this patent truth, it was a 
 great pity. 
 
 The trouble with Mr. Patterson's conclusion did 
 not lie in its incorrectness, but rather in its utter 
 irrelevancy and inapplicability to the situation. 
 We were confronted with the evil of dear money ; 
 and to pretend to face that evil by inveighing 
 against an inflated or cheap currency, was about as 
 logical as it would be for a physician to treat a 
 small-pox patient for a case of yellow fever, and 
 then justify his folly by the grave and solemn state- 
 ment that no greater calamity could overtake the 
 patient (now expiring from small-pox) than a well 
 defined case of yellow fever. 
 
 Some fifteen years ago fiat money came near 
 triumphing in this country, but we are to-day reap- 
 ing the bitter fruits of a triumph in the opposite 
 direction. The people, failing to perceive the cun- 
 ning fraud concealed in the never-ending cry for 
 "a sound currency and an honest dollar," have en- 
 couraged legislation which has placed the greater 
 part of the currency beyond reach, and thus de- 
 stroyed its real function as a circulating medium. 
 The currency has finally become so "sound," the
 
 THE FIFTY-CENT DOLLAR. 43 
 
 dollar so "honest," that it no longer seeks labor, to 
 remunerate it, but leaves it either impoverished 
 begging or starving ; it- no longer hunts investment 
 and development, but is content, for the time be- 
 ing, to remain inactive, feeding upon its own in- 
 creasing strength and power. 
 
 It is not strange that Wall street, and all others 
 who take their inspiration from that source, should, 
 far more reasons than one, be averse to silver, per 
 se; because, first, if the currency of the country 
 were more largely silver money, the banks would 
 be less able to control that currency. Silver is not 
 the character of money that constitutes the larger 
 per cent, of bank deposits and profits to a bank 
 come from its deposits, not its capital stock. Second, 
 silver constitutes an unhandy sort of currency for 
 the large transactions which make banking profita- 
 ble. Imagine a Wall street transaction, involving 
 a hundred thousand or five hundred thousand dol- 
 lars (more money than the average man earns in a 
 lifetime), being conducted in silver dollars! In 
 the immediate business of banking, silver is only 
 desirable for purposes of making change. That a 
 greater volume of silver currency would interfere 
 with the profits and power of the great banking in-
 
 44 THE FIFTY-CENT DOLLAR. 
 
 stitutions of the country may be true. Their oppo- 
 sition to silver, then, is natural, and an undisputed 
 privilege. But it is equally clear that the people 
 have made a mistake in supposing that their inter- 
 ests on this question were identical with those of 
 the banks, whose voice and lead the majority were 
 content to follow in the recent financial controversy, 
 resulting in the recent financial legislation. This 
 error was facilitated, too, in the fact that the one 
 individual who possessed greatest power in the 
 matter, Mr. Cleveland, has found it impossible ever 
 to contemplate the situation from any other view- 
 point than Wall street. 
 
 New York City was headquarters for the ruth- 
 less war successfully waged for a contracted (now 
 a congested) currency; and why should there not 
 be at this time in that city alone near one hundred 
 millions of idle dollars? Idle money in the hands 
 of a comparative few, is the logical and universal 
 result of contraction, or legislation promising con- 
 traction ; and the present financial congestion is 
 the legitimate spoils of a battle fought for that 
 purpose. 
 
 The idle money of the country will keep, 
 whether gold, silver or paper. In due season it
 
 THE FIFTY-CEXT DOLLAR. 
 
 will reach out for its prey, and further concentrate 
 into the hands of a few the rightful wealth of the 
 many. There is no pressing occasion for that 
 money to move just now, in the face of prices still 
 pursuing their even tenor downwards. Why invest 
 a given sum to-day for w r hat may be bought for less 
 to-morrow? 
 
 On the part of ^hose now hoarding money, it 
 is, after all, a pure matter of business calculation, 
 and not want of confidence, about which we hear so 
 much. Want of confidence in what? Is human 
 nature less worthy of trust than it once was? Is 
 the idle, suffering labor of the land less willing or 
 less capable than formerly? Have the mines and 
 fields and forests ceased to. yield their wonted 
 abundance? No; there was never more confidence 
 than that now felt by the few who hold the purse- 
 strings, and who will eventually reap unrighteous 
 gains from the present straits of the majority, if 
 we are not soon to have a change of financial policy. 
 In the meantime, the ruin already wrought can 
 hardly be repaired. No natural law can avert the 
 evil, which is in the very teeth of the greatest 
 abundance of everything wherewith to be fed, 
 clothed and sheltered.
 
 46 THE FIFTY-CENT DOLLAR. 
 
 When a great number of the people are in 
 distress in the midst of plenty, it is human laws 
 that are at fault, and not natural laws. If this be 
 untrue, let the phenomenon be explained by the 
 doctrinaires who are now leading the people and 
 carrying the day, with their fine teaching onparity, 
 and ratio, and single standard. 
 
 In view of the immediate adverse results from 
 the recent financial legislation, there can be no 
 ground from which to defend it ; and it would seem 
 that there can be no longer room for argument by 
 which to deceive on this question. 
 
 We have all heard the old adage that actions 
 speak louder than words ; so do results speak louder 
 than theories. We, are fast discovering that the 
 secret of idle millions of money now in the metro- 
 politan banks of the country, lies in the unwise and 
 unjust premium put upon money by legislation. And 
 when Henry Clews now recommends to the Ameri- 
 can people methods by which to get rid of some of 
 our gold, "in order to reduce the unhealthy surplus 
 of money" (in New York City), he insults their in- 
 telligence and mocks their distress. 
 
 The people have but to read and observe, in 
 order to see that the character of legislation which
 
 THE FIFTY-CENT DOLLAR. 47 
 
 promised relief has not brought it. They are 
 rapidly learning what Senator Sherman substan- 
 tially admitted in his last argument in the Senate 
 on this question that free coinage of silver would 
 cheapen the gold dollar and silver dollar alike. 
 They both now occupy the same heights ; and]no 
 one pretends to fear that the gold dollar will ever 
 become too cheap. To prevent its growing dearer 
 should be the effort of the American people. 
 
 Let us do, then, what Senator Sherman did not 
 want done cheapen both the gold dollar and the 
 silver dollar alike, by putting them on the same 
 plane before the law. 
 
 The argument that free coinage of silver will 
 tend to drive our gold to Europe and bring silver 
 back in its stead, has lost its force, since the past 
 year's experience has shown that it is of little con- 
 sequence whether gold is disposed toward Europe 
 or from Europe this way. Nor can the people, by 
 having China and Mexico held up to them as silver 
 standard governments, be again frightened into the 
 belief that we would somehow be transformed into 
 Chinamen or Mexicans, should we adopt a more 
 liberal policy toward silver money. We are begin- 
 ning to realize now that China and Mexico are what
 
 48 THE FIFTY-CENT DOLLAR. 
 
 they are by reason of their environments, and not 
 on account of the color or any other quality of their 
 money. If dear money is the desideratum, surely 
 that end is attained with silver In China, for a sil- 
 ver dollar there will buy more human labor and 
 sacrifice than a gold dollar can purchase in any 
 other country of the world. It is being seen and 
 realized now, that gold, so serenely called the money 
 of the world, constituting only about $2.50 per 
 capita of the world's inhabitants, can no more stand 
 sponsor for all other needed forms of money, than 
 a bank can stand a run from its depositors when 
 there is but a small per cent, of its deposits on hand 
 with which to pay. It is being fast discovered that 
 the function of government, with reference to its 
 money, is to coin it, as far as it is possible, rather 
 than to issue paper or silver promises to pay in 
 gold, which it does not possess, and cannot procure 
 in sufficient quantity to redeem its pledges except 
 by borrowing from Shylocks on interest bearing bonds. 
 The people, from sad experience, are beginning 
 to believe that Mr. Carlisle, the present Secretary 
 of the Treasury, told the truth when he said some 
 years ago, that the demonetization of silver in this 
 country would mean more ruin and wreck than the
 
 THE FIFTY-CENT DOLLAR. 49 
 
 destruction by fire of half the combustible property 
 of the land, including the ships at sea; and Mr. 
 Carlisle's present course is not ascribed to increased 
 wisdom or statesmanship on his part, nor to any 
 change in silver money, but to a remarkable change 
 in himself. 
 
 Mr. Cleveland, during his former administra- 
 tion, took o'ccasion to say, concerning the tariff, that 
 we were confronted with a condition and not a 
 theory. Those ominous words of the President, 
 spoken at a time when the condition was not par- 
 ticularly grave, would have been much more fitly 
 spoken concerning the financial question, in his last 
 message to Congress. 
 
 He is now giving himself wholly to theory, and 
 not to the condition. In the meantime, all his 
 theories going to show that this country's welfare 
 is advanced by legislation unfriendly to silver, have 
 utterly failed us. 
 
 A theory unsupported by facts or results, is a 
 delusion and a snare.
 
 CHAPTER IV. 
 
 THE PEOPLE NOW THINKING FOR THEM- 
 SELVES. 
 
 MAKCH, 1895. 
 
 Not until the masses of the American people 
 began to think for fhemselves, did the "campaign 
 of education" really set in on the tariff question ; 
 when it was learned that for a quarter of a century 
 they had been falsely persuaded that the whole 
 people were being enriched by a system which 
 levied a general tax upon consumption for the ben- 
 efit of particular classes. In like manner, the peo- 
 ple are now beginning to think for themselves on 
 the financial question, and have at last grown suspi- 
 cious of the persistent, systematic, and apparently 
 organized, teaching on this question ; which seems 
 only to have furnished theories at the expense of 
 disastrous facts. 
 
 Every observing person in this country knows 
 that the hard times through which a majority of 
 the people are now passing, began with the crusade 
 against silver, following the enactment of the
 
 THE FIFTY-CENT DOLLAR. 51 
 
 Sherman law in 1890. It is further apparent that 
 the situation has grown steadily worse since the late 
 financial war began ; on the one hand, to force upon 
 the government a gold standard as its fixed finan- 
 cial policy, and on the other, to re-establish the 
 free coinage of silver. It is an historical fact, also, 
 that our national legislation, during the period 
 mentioned, has all been adverse to silver, and in 
 the direction of a gold standard. While the pur- 
 chasing clause of the Sherman act was rightfully 
 repealed, nothing was enacted in its stead providing 
 for the further use of silver. The subsequent effort 
 to coin the seigniorage in the treasury ended in 
 failure. And along with this legislation there was 
 established the precedent of paying out gold alone, 
 instead of gold and silver indiscriminately, in tak- 
 ing up the government's paper promises offered for 
 redemption. 
 
 The foregoing are facts of recent history, which 
 will not be denied, however plausible and satisfac- 
 tory to some may still be the theories upon which 
 are built the arguments against silver and in favor 
 of a gold standard. 
 
 Monometallists were assuring the country about 
 two years ago that general prosperity would be at
 
 THE FIFTY-CENT DOLLAR. 
 
 once restored by the unconditional repeal of the 
 then remaining legislation recognizing silver as a 
 partial basis for our currency. Still trusting the 
 sources whence this fight upon silver emanated, this 
 prescription was taken, and the last act necessary 
 to place our financial system upon a gold basis was 
 accomplished. But, despite the disastrous results 
 from what has been done, the specious arguments 
 against silver, and in defense of the present sys- 
 tem, are as cunningly put forward as ever before. 
 We are yet told that it is impossible to have two 
 yard-sticks of different lengths, though the perpe- 
 trators of this stale verbal trick fail to state the 
 equally self-evident proposition, that we can have 
 two yard-sticks of different materials. We hear 
 no end of the "fifty cent" silver dollar, while we all 
 know that for the purpose of its existence it is 
 worth a gold dollar, and that its procurement costs 
 a greater sacrifice of toil or property than ever be- 
 fore in the history of this country; hundreds of 
 thousands being scarcely able now to sell their 
 labor at any price. 
 
 While (for manifest reasons under the present 
 system) our gold is constantly going out of the 
 treasury and out of the country, yet the cause of
 
 THE FIFTY-CENT DOLLAR. 53 
 
 this is impudently denied, and the argument still 
 made that the very opposite . conditions, such as 
 would prevail under free coinage of silver, would 
 drive our gold away. We hear it over and over 
 again, that free coinage would at most only benefit 
 the miners of silver bullion ; and unthinking per- 
 sons accept this as true, forgetting that the same 
 argument would prove that the government should 
 never have had a dollar of circulating medium 
 coined from gold or silver, because, forsooth, no- 
 body was benefitted thereby but those furnishing 
 the bullion ! It is an argument made with an air 
 of confidence and sincerity, which, if reduced to 
 practice in the past, would have left us to the 
 primitive barter system the first thing abandoned 
 by civilization and government ; all history teach- 
 ing that the greater the volume of circulating me- 
 dium, the greater the enterprise, activity and pros- 
 perity, along with a more equable distribution of 
 wealth among all the people. 
 
 China and other countries, that have too little 
 silver, and no gold at all, are yet held up as scare- 
 crows, though with just the same propriety and 
 logic could Turkey and Liberia be cited by the ad- 
 vocates of silver as fit examples of gold standard 
 countries.
 
 54 THE FIFTY-CENT DOLLAR. 
 
 Even the laboring man is now told that he, too, 
 belongs to the creditor class because he does not 
 ask for his pay in advance of the work done for it ! 
 This mocking of the idle, hungry labor of the land 
 is like offering him a drug that he may forget his 
 misery, only to have it return upon him magnified, 
 when the narcotic has spent its force. And more, 
 every man who is trying to guard his wife and chil- 
 dren against future want, through the medium of 
 an insurance policy, is being reminded of his re- 
 cent elevation to that charmed circle known as the 
 creditor class. Before these new recruits begin to 
 regale themselves, they should go to the coffers of 
 life insurance companies in this country and count 
 the ill-gotten millions that have been paid into 
 them on policies surrendered during the past five 
 
 JZ'1~' 
 
 years for she*e lack of the means to pay the annual 
 premium. After such investigation, the insured in 
 this country would at most only regard their new 
 honors as empty ones. 
 
 The arguments alluded to, along with many like 
 ones, are put with the skill of a clairvoyant, and re- 
 peated along the line. The average man is power- 
 less to meet them in kind, but some things he does 
 know and understand. He knows that in the midst
 
 THE FIFTY-CENT DOLLAR. 
 
 of plenty he is in distress, or at least that millions 
 of his fellows are. He knows that this distress has 
 come with legislation hostile to silver ; and he 
 knows that the relief so devoutly promised him has 
 never come. 
 
 Money is not, under civilized governments, 
 what it was in the days of Abraham a certain 
 weight of gold or silver, or other substance. Neither 
 gold nor silver is money except by government 
 authority. Where the two metals do not exist in 
 sufficient quantity to supply the demand for a cir- 
 culating medium (and they have never so existed 
 in this country) government promises are necessary, 
 in the form of paper money to be redeemed in coin. 
 All will admit that the government should, as far 
 as possible, avoid these promises, whether direct, 
 through treasury notes, or indirect, in the form of 
 legalized bank issues, for which the government 
 stands responsible. It makes no such promise in 
 coining gold or silver ; though it is constantly 
 stated falsely that the value of a silver dollar is 
 only maintained by virtue of its redeemability in 
 gold. There has never been a law of this land that 
 pledged the government to redeem silver dollars 
 with gold dollars. The exchangeability of the two
 
 56 THE FIFTY-CEXT DOLLAR. 
 
 metals as money is conventional, and not legisla- 
 tive. With free coinage of silver, therefore, the 
 government would be under no pledges on account 
 of its currency, except as to the paper promises re- 
 ferred to ; and such promises would be supported 
 by both silver and gold. 
 
 Individual financiering proves disastrous where 
 obligations are needlessly multiplied, with the 
 means to meet them growing more and more lim- 
 ited. But monometallists have succeeded in forcing 
 just such policy upon our government. The Con- 
 stitution provides for the coining of money from 
 gold and silver, and not for unnecessary government 
 promises, which might prove difficult, if not impos- 
 sible, to meet. 
 
 Gold standard advocates have about succeeded 
 in turning the government into a great banking in- 
 stitution (for designing millionaires to prey upon) ; 
 yet those who have resisted such government policy 
 are denounced as being opposed to "a sound cur- 
 rency and an honest dollar." These immaculate 
 advocates for "honest money" have forced the pres- 
 ent plan of attempting, with a hundred millions of 
 
 gold, to perform the impossible task of redeeming 
 
 i 
 about a thousand millions of paper and silver
 
 THE FIFTY-CENT DOLLAR. 57 
 
 promises. Of course the well-understood and only 
 escape for the treasury, at every run upon it under 
 these conditions, is the selling of bonds for gold, 
 with which to replenish this inadequate gold re- 
 serve ; an absurd spectacle being at the same time 
 presented, in the treasury^ furnishing gold with 
 which to replenish itself blood extracted from the 
 body, to be taken into the stomach as a strengthener ! 
 It is true, the average man does not, and would 
 not, engage in runs upon the public treasury. On 
 acquiring dollars, of whatever kind, he is content, 
 so long as he knows that each one will buy a dol- 
 lar's worth in support of himself or family ; and it 
 is of no consequence to him whether or not such 
 dollars could be exchanged for gold dollars (having 
 no greater purchasing power) at the government 
 treasury. But there are those who sagaciously de- 
 sire the investment of their surplus millions in 
 United States bonds. Such security is not taxable ; 
 it is a mortgage upon all the property and toil of 
 the land, arid is a constantly increasing source of 
 wealth, as the purchasing power of each dollar 
 called for increases. It is not difficult, therefore, to 
 understand w r hy this class would engraft upon our 
 government a system whereby the repeated issu-
 
 58 THE FIFTY-CENT DOLLAR. 
 
 ance of United States bonds is made a necessity at 
 their will ; though it is difficult to understand why 
 others, not so interested, could have encouraged 
 such a system. 
 
 Our money, as a medium of exchange, whether 
 gold, silver or paper, is the creature of government, 
 in the sense that it must be given legal tender 
 quality by the government. Having assumed, 
 therefore, to provide and control our circulating 
 medium, the government is necessarily under obli- 
 gation to do nothing tending to disturb its function 
 as such circulating medium. That function is dis- 
 turbed, however, and wholly or partially destroyed 
 the moment legislation is enacted, or promised, 
 which contemplates a contracting currency ; for the 
 holders of money, at such times, withdraw it from 
 circulation in order to reap the benefits of the 
 promised contraction every dollar being thereby 
 augmented in purchasing power. Thus, by con- 
 traction, the free circulation of money (upon 
 which all prosperity depends) is arrested, and cor- 
 responding paralysis is the result. 
 
 Many persons unwittingly join in the demand 
 for dearer money (money being what they are seek- 
 ing, rather than what they possess) without realiz-
 
 THE FIFTY-CENT DOLLAR. 59 
 
 ing that the process of making it dearer (increas- 
 ing its purchasing power) puts it further beyond 
 their reach, and lessens, or destroys altogether, the 
 demand for what they have to offer for money, 
 whether labor, professional skill or property. If 
 every one could continue to acquire his accustomed 
 income of dollars, under a system that constantly 
 demanded and assured an increase in their pur- 
 chasing power, certainly nothing would be more ad- 
 vantageous than to systematically increase that 
 purchasing power. But, in the very nature of 
 things, this process results in cutting off the supply 
 of money from those who are without it, and whose 
 means of living consists in something else that'is 
 offered in exchange for money. 
 
 Contraction, or legislation and agitation in that 
 direction, simply encourage an inactive currency, 
 which, to the extent that it exists, is the destruction 
 of money as a circulating medium rendering it an 
 unjust and ruinous source of wealth to the holder, 
 while remaining in a state of inactivity. Happily 
 the influence of such agitation is waning, and the 
 folly of such legislation is becoming apparent; 
 hence returning prosperity is in sight- 
 Manifestly there are two limited classes who
 
 60 THE FIFTY-CENT DOLLAR. 
 
 are benefitted by such financial policy as has been 
 furnished the country in recent years ; first, those 
 whose possessions consist wholly or chiefly in money, 
 or its equivalent in guaranteed securities ; second, 
 those who enjoy certain incomes, fixed by law or 
 otherwise. These two classes taken together, while 
 comparatively few in number, constitute a very 
 large part of the wealth and intelligence of the 
 country ; and naturally their position and influence, 
 on this vital question, have been on the side of self- 
 interest. And the masses have blindly followed 
 them, mistaking selfishness for political wisdom and 
 patriotism. 
 
 Those who have advocated false and deceptive 
 doctrine on this question, now join most lustily 
 in deprecating present conditions, and, as an ex- 
 planation therefor, are pleased to advance every 
 theory except their own folly or knavery. They 
 defy the simple laws of cause and effect, and say 
 that the trouble results from what others wanted 
 done, but not from what was actually done by their 
 procurement. They know, or by this time should 
 know, that the inactivity of money, with all its 
 evil consequences, is the logical, certain and con- 
 tinuing result of legislation tending to reduce the
 
 THE FIFTY-CENT DOLLAR. 61 
 
 supply, however adequate the existing supply might 
 be. This fact is nothing new. All history teaches 
 it, and it was certainly well known to the originat- 
 ors of the movement to crush out silver money; 
 whatever may be said of many who have followed, 
 aiding and abetting, with nothing to gain and all to 
 lose thereby. And, to-day, this country, by reason 
 of vicious financial legislation, is confronted with 
 a spectacle without a parallel in the history of the 
 world, to-wit, millions of idle money in the hands 
 of a comparative few, general business paralysis, 
 the balance of trade against us and a national 
 treasury powerless to meet its obligations, the en- 
 forced bankruptcy of hundreds of thousands who 
 lack neither capacity nor. will, and other hundreds 
 of thousands holding their hands in helpless idle- 
 ness and want. These conditions cannot be ascribed 
 to natural causes. Nature has graciously con- 
 tributed to prosperity has done her utmost to 
 avert the ruin. Present conditions are the un- 
 erring result of causes purely artificial and designed. 
 Those of the Henry Clews type still tell us 
 that u lack of confidence" is the trouble ; as if this 
 vague, meaningless phrase accounted for some 
 great moral revolution in the laws governing human
 
 THE FIFTY-CENT DOLLAR. 
 
 motives and actions. How the country will rejoice 
 when this class shall conclude that the wandering 
 prodigal, "Confidence," should return home ! It 
 will begin to return whenever the people of the 
 country become fully alive to the secret of their 
 trouble and its source. 
 
 Others say economy is the remedy, when never 
 before was there so much compulsory economy as 
 has for four years past been practiced by a great 
 majority of the people. Economy (doing without) 
 will enrich one man, if those around him are buy- 
 ing and enjoying what this one produces ; but the 
 economy of all, whether voluntary or involuntary, 
 simply means each one's doing without something 
 which the others have to sell, while the possessions 
 of all shrink or perish on their hands. When every 
 one has satiated himself upon what is his own, he 
 can go no further ; and each suffers for want of 
 what the other possesses. We see this every day 
 around us. It is a condition forced by the absence, 
 or inactivity of a circulating medium. Economy, 
 therefore, which is offered as the remedy, is really 
 a result of the trouble. 
 
 In like manner over-production is said to be the 
 cause of the difficulty, when it, too, is simply a re-
 
 THE FIFTY-CENT DOLLAR. 
 
 suit. There can only be over-production when a 
 portion of the supply is not wanted. Is it correct 
 to say that there is over-production of cotton, so 
 long as any number of human beings are insuffi- 
 ciently clothed, and are in vain offering their toil 
 in order to secure that clothing? With cotton goods 
 needed and labor idle, there is no such thing as 
 over-production of cotton. 
 
 Again, is it fair to say that there is over pro- 
 duction of wheat, with hungry men, women and 
 children in the very shadow of the elevators asking 
 for work ? That is the condition in Chicago to-day. 
 Hundreds of thousands insufficiently fed, and wheat 
 over-produced ! 
 
 It is a sad commentary upon law and civiliza- 
 tion, when any considerable number of capable and 
 willing persons are in distress on account of super- 
 abundance of the wherewith to relieve that distress. 
 Man in a state of nature, freed from the environ- 
 ment of government, would never suffer from such 
 difficulty. 
 
 The truth of the whole matter is this : Indi- 
 viduals began to hoard money because they were 
 promised legislation tending to make their money 
 dearer. They did with their money just what one
 
 64 THE FIFTY-CENT DOLLAR. 
 
 would do with his cotton or wheat or other thing 
 that promised a higher price in future. The hoard- 
 ing of money produced stagnation and started 
 prices downward. Thus, hoarding became more 
 and more profitable ; it has fed and fattened upon 
 itself. 
 
 Were the irredeemable silver dollar the cause 
 of the trouble, as the people have been urged to 
 believe, it would have been let go, and would long 
 since have lost its parity with the gold dollar. But 
 the silver dollar is as devoutly held by its detract- 
 ors as the gold dollar. And now the country is im- 
 pudently reminded that none of the silver hereto- 
 fore coined has been denied its legal tender qual- 
 ity, that there is as much money in the country as 
 ever before ; so why complain? This is like saying 
 the patient should not have died, because his dead 
 body had lost none of its blood. But the body 
 ceases to live when the blood ceases. to circulate. 
 
 Suppose, for illustration, a separate and inde- 
 pendent community, composed, say, of 1,000 per- 
 sons. Now, under the census of 1890, the average 
 wealth of the people of this country was about 
 $1,000 per capita, and the proportion of property to 
 money about forty to one. According to these
 
 THE FIFTY-CENT DOLLAR. 65 
 
 figures the aggregate wealth of the community in 
 question would be $1,000,000 ; and the total amount 
 of money in circulation would be but $25,000. This 
 sum would represent all the commerce, all the de- 
 velopment, and all the prosperity of that com- 
 munity. Suppose further, that one person in the 
 community, richer than the average member, was 
 worth $25,000 or more, and should convert his en- 
 tire property into money thus absorbing for the 
 time being all the money in circulation. There 
 would be no actual contraction of the currency in 
 that case, but it is needless to say that withholding 
 from circulation or reinvestment the money thus 
 in hand, would mean suspension of all forms of 
 business and development, and would result in cer- 
 tain bankruptcy to all but this one person. It may 
 be said that in pursuing the course suggested, he 
 would be but exercising an indisputable privilege. 
 Unquestionably so; but any legislation on behalf 
 of that community, tending to encourage such 
 course, would be nothing less than criminal. Yet, 
 under the pretense of maintaining for the people 
 "a sound currency," we have had just such legisla- 
 tion by the American government, with like result. 
 And now, after our mad war upon silver money,
 
 66 THE FIFTY-CENT DOLLAR. 
 
 and the stupendous sacrifice that has been made in 
 the name of "honest money," we find English cap- 
 italists clamoring for our government bonds at 
 about 3 per cent, interest, and payable thirty years 
 from now in silver, if we choose. 
 
 Legislation is unjust that would inflate, or un- 
 duly increase, the curreney, and thus disturb cred- 
 its or lessen the value of investments that are to 
 be returned in fixed sums of money. But a thou- 
 sand fold more unjust, and infinitely more disas- 
 trous, is legislation that seeks or tends to contract 
 the currency and increase the purchasing power of 
 a dollar ; which simply means to magnify the 
 shadow, and minimize and destroy the substance. 
 It means a currency always tending to inaction, the 
 constant depression of values, the demoralization 
 of commerce, the suspension of enterprise and de- 
 velopment, the multiplying of idleness, and final 
 disaster to an overwhelming majority of the people. 
 
 Under our blighting financial policy and sys- 
 tem during the past few years, it is not to be won- 
 dered at that American investments, constantly 
 falling in price, should have been returned to us 
 from abroad, and gold demanded in their stead. 
 The foreign investor is not singular in wanting his
 
 THE FIFTY-CENT DOLLAR. 67 
 
 money out of an investment that has ceased to pay. 
 He is not afraid, however, of our bonds, which 
 guarantee a fixed return of our money, whether 
 gold or silver. We have yet to hear of our bonds 
 returning to us. 
 
 Gold was not denied an equal showing with 
 silver in this country, when it was being produced 
 more rapidly than ever silver has been produced 
 since ; and there was no trouble then about the 
 market value of gold bullion, because its coinage 
 was allowed to remain free, and its value was then, 
 as now, determined by law. 
 
 Ordinary intelligence, and all experience, teach 
 that the market value of a metal that is largely used 
 for purposes of money, is influenced, either favor- 
 ably or unfavorably, by legislation. While this is 
 strangely denied by some as to gold, it is equally 
 strange that the same persons admit its truth as to 
 silver, and agree that coining silver would increase 
 the price of silver bullion. Indeed, this fact as to 
 silver is not only admitted by monometallists, but 
 it has been most successfully used to prejudice the 
 cause of silver, by the charge that free coinage of 
 silver would enrich Ihe silver miners of the West 
 (increase the value of their bullion) and benefit no
 
 68 THE FIFTY-CENT DOLLAR. 
 
 body else, but rather work injury to the people as a 
 whole, equal to the benefit conferred upon producers 
 of silver. We have been taught that the govern- 
 ment would, in some way, pay out something to the 
 silver miners (by coining silver, giving it legal ten- 
 der quality, and turning it loose), just as it pays 
 money to pensioners ; and it is constantly asserted 
 that bi-metallists would add "silver pensioners" 
 to the list of those receiving government-bounty. 
 
 So much, then, for the proposition, that free 
 coinage of silver would inceease the price of silver 
 bullion. But its coinage value is 100 cents now, 
 with its bullion value about 50 cents. Will the sil- 
 ver dollar, then, become less valuable, as compared 
 with the gold dollar, on increasing the value of the 
 metal from which the silver dollar is coined? That 
 is to say, if 50 cents worth of silver now makes a 
 good dollar, will 60 cents worth, or 75 cents worth, 
 or 95 cents worth, make a bad dollar? 
 
 According to the gold standard advocates, the 
 silver dollar is 50 cents fiat, and 50 cents money. 
 Instead of condemning it, therefore, why should 
 they not say, "Hurrah for the United States gov- 
 ernment, and its fiat!" No! they would sooner 
 erect a golden calf at once and bow down before it.
 
 THE FIFTY-CENT DOLLAR. 69 
 
 Since, however, the fiat in the silver dollar is 
 the chief ground of attack upon it from monometal- 
 lists, why is it not their aim to destroy this fiat 
 element, as far as possible, by increasing the value 
 of silver bullion? Their aim is rather to wipe out 
 silver forever, and give gold supreme control ; for 
 that would reduce the power over the currency to a 
 closer corporation. 
 
 After restoring silver, there will be time enough 
 to demonetize it, whenever it begins to drive some of 
 our idolized gold away, and develops incapacity to 
 perform the function of money, on a parity with the 
 gold dollar at a fixed ratio. It is maintaining that 
 function now, despite all the legislation and manip- 
 ulation to the contrary. Will it cease to do so under 
 more friendly legislation? 
 
 All compromises with the enemies of silver have 
 proven snares and worse than failures. The course 
 of other leading nations, as to the two metals, can 
 no longer b*e made our excuse, for they are now (at 
 least their masses are) holding out their hands and 
 asking, after a more protracted experience with 
 monometallism than ours has been, to be restored 
 to bi-metallism. But, unfortunately for the other 
 countries, the masses there have not the same power
 
 70 THE FIFTY-CENT DOLLAR. 
 
 that they have here; 
 
 It was not because of the real or supposed dis- 
 parity of silver with gold, at the ratio of 16 to 1, 
 that its extermination was sought in this country ; 
 for no other greater ratio has ever been demanded. 
 The simple purpose was to contract the currency to 
 a gold basis, and silver was the necessary object of 
 attack. 
 
 In 1834, when the ratio between the two metals 
 of 15 to 1 was deemed inadequate, the demoneti- 
 zation of silver was not resorted to as the remedy. 
 The menacing and sordid influence, known as the 
 money power, which has since grown up in this 
 country, did not then exist, to dictate, and almost 
 to control the financial legislation and operations of 
 our government. The course pursued at the time 
 referred to was to readjust the ratio, making it 16 
 to 1, and that, too, by decreasing the gold dollar, and 
 leaving the silver dollar unchanged. Such readjust- 
 ment as this, whether fair or unfair, was never pro- 
 posed by the advocates of silver in the struggle of 
 1893. They have never asked that the gold dollar 
 be reduced. And in the conflict referred to, in or- 
 der to prevent the complete overthrow of silver, its 
 friends were content, if need be, to increase the sil-
 
 THE FIFTY-CENT DOLLAR. 71 
 
 ver dollar ; but this, for manifest reasons, was 
 equally obnoxious to the contractionists. Their 
 purpose was not to cure any supposed disparity, but 
 
 to destroy. 
 
 ***** 
 
 What precedes in this volume is an effort to 
 point out some of the financial evils of a contracting 
 currency. The moral evils from such source are 
 greater. But a discussion of that question is waived 
 with the single query, however, while passing: Are 
 crime, vice, immorality and poverty on the wane, or 
 on the increase in this beloved land of ours? and 
 are they likely to diminish under a financial system 
 that means perpetual contraction? 
 
 * 
 
 It may not be amiss to repeat here what has 
 often been quoted from the British historian, Sir 
 Archibald Alison, who says : "The downfall of the 
 Roman Empire, so long ascribed, in ignorance, to 
 slavery, heathenism and moral corruption, was in 
 reality brought about by a decline in the silver and 
 gold mines of Spain and Greece." In other words, 
 slavery, heathenism and moral corruption were not 
 the cause, but the result of a cause that went before. 
 Contraction did there what it is doing, and will con- 
 tinue to do, here : it swept away the prosperous
 
 72 THE FIFTY-CENT DOLLAR. 
 
 A 
 
 middle classes, and amassed the wealth into a few 
 hands. It multiplied poverty. And whatever im- 
 mense wealth may do for those possessing it, we all 
 know and admit that extreme poverty brings vice 
 and crime. 
 
 We as a nation are no more secure than Rome 
 once thought herself, and appeared to be ; yet we 
 are deliberately doing with our currency what Rome 
 was powerless to prevent as to hers. 
 
 That which worked Rome's death (a contract- 
 ing currency) is now prescribed to us as a remedy. 
 Shall we take the medicine trustingly, or shall we 
 call in another physician?
 
 REPLY TO CRITICS. 
 
 Desiring to elaborate certain statements con- 
 tained in the foregoing chapters, and to meet in ad- 
 vance, as far as possible, criticisms that are appre- 
 hended, the method adopted for the purpose is the 
 following questions and answers; the liberty being 
 allowed the supposed interrogator to put his ques- 
 tions in that form usually resorted to by the quib- 
 bler to pervert meaning. 
 
 Question. It is stated that a government's 
 money is as good as that government, whatever that 
 money may be made of. Is not that a very hazard- 
 ous proposition? 
 
 Answer. The government in mind was that of 
 the United States ; that one in which the American 
 people are most concerned thus far the best gov- 
 ernment, with the greatest people, in the world. 
 If the statement was in any sense an error, there- 
 fore, it was in the direction of patriotism and not 
 treason. 
 
 What was particularly meant is this : Money 
 of the United States, in the United States, is as
 
 74 THE FIFTY-CENT DOLLAR. 
 
 good, and will always be as good, when made of 
 silver as when made of gold. 
 
 Q. You say, "in the United States ;" but sup- 
 pose we were in England, say, with our money; 
 which would be the better, gold or silver? 
 
 A. That meaningless question is often put be- 
 cause of the confusion it creates. Before proceed- 
 ing to discuss it, however, we should at least bear 
 in mind that very few of our people use the United 
 States for sleeping quarters, while they do business 
 in England during the day. Few, indeed, enjoy 
 even one trip abroad during a lifetime. 
 
 We have been taught to view our financial 
 affairs too much from a foreign standpoint. For 
 instance, only a brief while ago Mr. Cleveland, 
 writing to certain parties in Chicago, said the fol- 
 lowing, among other things, in favor of a gold 
 standard in this country : "If the American peo- 
 ple were only concerned in the maintenance of 
 their physical life among themselves, they might 
 return to the old days of barter." That is to say, 
 were it not for our foreign relations (involving 
 about 5 per cent, of our commerce) it would be a 
 small matter to take care of the remaining 95 per 
 cent., and the same could be conducted on the bar-
 
 THE FIFTY-CENT DOLLAR. 
 
 ter system. This remarkable statement of the 
 President is in line with the teaching the people of 
 this country have been receiving during the past 
 few years. They are fast growing weary of it ; and 
 are rebelling at present conditions, which tend very 
 much toward "the old days of barter," for lack of 
 an active circulating medium. 
 
 But to return to the question : In the first place, 
 our silver dollars and gold dollars would not be 
 money in England at all, but would be bullion for 
 which very reason the enemies of silver, if consist- 
 ent, should be doing everything possible to advance 
 the price of silver bullion, instead of running it 
 down. In the second place, we would not be in 
 England, or any other civilized foreign country, 
 with American dollars of any kind. We would go 
 with letters of credit, giving us the right to draw 
 money from a bank of the foreign country, which 
 right would be acquired by depositing money in a 
 bank here ; and the banks would afterwards settle 
 the matter between themselves. 
 
 Q. Then suppose the settlement between the 
 banks should require the remittance of either gold 
 or silver to the foreign bank? 
 
 A. That would be a matter of no concern to
 
 THE FIFTY-CENT DOLLAR. 
 
 UP, since our silver dollars here would buy the right 
 to just as much money in the foreign country as 
 gold dollars would buy. But say it would not, then 
 all those, particularly the bankers, who are so much 
 concerned about foreign countries on this money 
 question, should be equally concerned to increase 
 the value of silver bullion. 
 
 As to the value of our silver dollars with for- 
 eigners, the recent experience of this country, in 
 the last issue of bonds, ought to be a sufficient les- 
 son. Mr. Cleveland, in a trade with foreigners, 
 made a distinction in favor of gold, to the extent of 
 about sixteen millions of dollars to be finally paid 
 on sixty-two and a half millions of bonds. After 
 Congress had properly refused to recognize this 
 distinction by law, the bonds at once sold second 
 hand for just as much when payable in silver or 
 gold, as if payable exclusively in gold. 
 
 It should be remembered, however, that the 
 men who bought those bonds hoped to see, before 
 their maturity, silver wiped out in this country for- 
 ever. And it is for the struggle that is now on to 
 determine that question a question for the future, 
 whether remote or near, which means liberty and 
 prosperity on the one hand, or financial bondage 
 and ruin on the other.
 
 THE FIFTY-CENT DOLLAR. 
 
 Q. But would not the free coinage of silver 
 cause the silver of other countries to be "dumped" 
 upon us? 
 
 A. Of all the sophistries that have been used 
 to mislead and deceive on this question, that one is 
 the most consummate, because the most plausible 
 on its face. 
 
 Labor, whether in this country or in Europe, is 
 paid in silver, not in gold. Take from England, 
 France or Germany the silver that is daily used 
 there now, and labor could not be paid their fac- 
 tories and engines would stop. We had an object 
 lesson of this kind here in 1893. At the very time 
 when the papers of New York City were ablaze 
 with their fusillade upon the "cheap silver dollar," 
 the people of tljat city took fright and withdrew 
 their silver from circulation, causing untold 
 distress to business ; and for a while silver dollars 
 were selling at more than a 100 cents, in order to 
 meet the imperative demands of commerce. Mr. 
 Chauncey Depew came near having to close up shop 
 with his great railroad, for lack of the silver with 
 which to pay employes a plight which was doubt- 
 less humiliating to the brilliant defamer of the 
 "fifty-cent dollar."
 
 78 THE FIFTY-CENT DOLLAR. 
 
 Something amusing in connection with the 
 period referred to, is the fact that bankers and 
 monometallists are wont to refer to it as the 
 "panic ;" as if it represented the only period of 
 hard times that they have visited upon this country 
 since 1890. It was certainly trying times for the 
 banks, but the people had been suffering before, 
 and they have continued to suffer since. 
 
 Q. But you are trying to side-track this dump- 
 ing business. Now, instead of bringing their silver 
 coin, suppose foreign countries should bring over 
 their silver bullion and have it coined? 
 
 A. What would they do with it otherwise than 
 invest it in this country ? Remember, this govern- 
 ment would not coin silver into foreign dollars. 
 Besides, the foreigner might have to wait quite a 
 while before getting his silver coined even into our 
 dollars. The surplus silver so-called seigniorage 
 now in the treasury would alone require the full 
 capacity of all our mints for about four years, and 
 the government might very well determine to coin 
 that first. 
 
 Q. But, would foreigners not bring their bul- 
 lion over and sell it for our gold dollars, and thus 
 reduce us to silver monometallism?
 
 THE FIFTY-CENT DOLLAR. 79 
 
 A. If silver bullion should advance in price 
 here, it would advance abroad ; and there would be 
 no necessity for bringing it over here to sell it 
 could be sold at home. 
 
 Q. Would not the cost of transportation, how- 
 ever, make a difference in favor of the price in this 
 country? 
 
 A. Then it would be sold abroad in order to 
 save transportation. 
 
 Let it be admitted, however, that foreigners 
 would bring silver bullion to this country and sell 
 it for our gold. We would in turn take our silver 
 bullion to them, and sell it for their gold. (We are 
 doing it now.) And that is a game at which- we 
 would beat them dreadfully ; for America would 
 produce more silver than all the world besides. 
 We would have vastly more to spare than any other 
 country ; and silver is always needed for other pur- 
 poses than money. We would thus, by free coin- 
 age, constantly replenish our supply of silver money, 
 and at the same time add to our gold supply. 
 
 In the meantime our wheat and cotton (the 
 two great products of this country on which the 
 foreigner is largely dependent) would advance in 
 price. We raise a large surplus of both, and their
 
 80 THE FIFTY-CENT DOLLAR. 
 
 prices are controlled in foreign markets, where a 
 given amount (weight) of silver will buy a given 
 amount of wheat or cotton. The more we increase 
 the price of that silver, therefore, the more we in- 
 crease the price of the cotton or wheat exchanged 
 for it. As proof of this, we find that cotton and 
 wheat have declined in price just about as silver 
 bullion has declined since 1873, at which time sil- 
 ver bullion was at a premium over gold bullion. 
 The temporary relations, from time to time, be- 
 tween the supply of and demand for the commodi- 
 ties named, have of course prevented anything like 
 uniformity in the decline mentioned. But, to make 
 use 'of the variations to defeat the argument drawn 
 from the general fact, is as unfair and unsound as 
 it would be to select a brief period embracing an 
 epidemic or an unusually healthful season by 
 which to determine the normal death rate of a com- 
 munity. Yet gold papers are constantly using just 
 such methods to destroy the argument referred to. 
 Even Professor J. Lawrence Laughlin, who has 
 recently become the Moses to deliver the mono- 
 metallists from their enemies, in attacking the 
 wheat and cotton argument, brings forward the 
 startling evidence that corn, oats and pork each re-
 
 THE FIFTY-CENT DOLLAR. 81 
 
 mained about uniform in price from 1873 to 1894. 
 He makes four rows of figures ; three to represent 
 the commodities named, and one to represent sil- 
 ver, and shows that the prices of these farm pro- 
 ducts kept up to a substantial level during the years 
 mentioned, while silver bullion was all the time 
 falling. The proof is convincing, but unfortunately 
 for the Professor, he forgot that he was demonstrat- 
 ing precisely what the silver advocate would prove, 
 to-wit, that those farm products (cotton and wheat) 
 whose prices are controlled abroad, have fallen with 
 silver bullion, while those products of the Ameri- 
 can farm (corn, oats and pork) whose prices are 
 not controlled abroad, have not been influenced by 
 the falling price of silver bullion. The Professor 
 illustrates not so much his own weakness, as the 
 weakness of his cause, when the light is turned on. 
 The same authority steps forward from day to day, 
 in the Chicago Times-Herald, panoplied and 
 shielded, Goliath like, to annihilate "Coin," the 
 little David who has recently given so much trouble 
 to the Philistines. But the observer will see that, 
 instead of harming David or his cause, Goliath is 
 constantly piercing himself by an unskillful use of 
 his own weapons. For example, he announces such
 
 82 THE FIFTY-CENT DOLLAR. 
 
 truths as the following, which no silver advocate 
 ^ would think of denying : "Money is only the ma- 
 chinery by which goods are exchanged against one 
 another. It is only a means to an end. It bears 
 the same relation to goods that a railway or a bridge 
 does." Then, forgetting himself and his cause, he 
 proceeds, with all the ingenuity of his cultured 
 mind, to advocate and defend a system which 
 destroys a part of that machinery ; which renders 
 ineffectual a portion of the means to the end ; 
 which would burn a part of that railway or bridge. 
 Mr. Laughlin, in order to demonstrate the necessity 
 for fewer dollars, says : "There is no need for a 
 separate gold dollar (he rather ignores any other 
 sort of dollar) for every bit of goods (property) in 
 the country, each worth a dollar." He should 
 know, however, that there is now less than one such 
 dollar for every hundred "bits" of goods ; or at 
 least that such was the case under the census of 
 1890, before goods began their rapid decline under 
 the system which he champions. 
 
 The farmers of the West and South, together 
 with the vast business interests dependent upon 
 those farmers, may well whet their swords for a 
 battle to lift wheat from fifty cents a bushel, and
 
 THE FIFTY-CENT DOLLAR. 
 
 cotton from five cents a pound to the producer 
 of each. Victory is within their grasp, if 
 they will but unite for its achievement. Al- 
 ready Henry Clews, the mouth-piece of Eastern 
 monometallism, is blowing a bugle blast, declaring 
 better times coming ; telling the people at the same 
 time, however, to keep quiej, on the silver question, 
 lest "Confidence" may take fright again, and return 
 to its hole. But the South and West are returning 
 a long, loud blast, which says that the rift in the 
 cloud is the result of the people's agitation of the 
 silver question ; that there was no break in the 
 cloud until the recent agitation began, and that 
 when this agitation ends in the triumph of the sil- 
 ver cause, we will once more be under a clear sky 
 and upon a smooth sea. 
 
 Restoration of normal prices to wheat and cot- 
 ton, with the renewed life and activity which would 
 follow, would create an immense balance of trade 
 in favor of the United States and it is the balance 
 of trade against a country that bleeds it of its gold 
 or any other form of money that is dearer (as a 
 commodity) in some other country. To preserve 
 our gold, we must preserve the balance of trade. 
 To preserve the balance of trade, we must not con-
 
 84 THE FIFTY-CENT DOLLAR. 
 
 tract the currency, and thereby encourage inactiv- 
 ity. Monometallists insist upon maintaining our 
 gold standard as the only means to avoid losing our 
 gold. Yet during the ten months preceding May 
 15, 1895, the exports of gold from this country were 
 sixty-four millions of dollars, against imports 
 amounting to thirty-six millions difference against 
 this country, twenty-eight millions ; being nearly 
 three millions a mouth, or ninety-three thousand 
 dollars a day going out at last accounts. 
 
 Q. So much is said about contraction. Why 
 is this, since the government has not reduced the 
 volume of currency by a single dollar? 
 
 A. Suppose the people of a neighborhood were 
 well supplied with wheat, and had on hand a fair 
 supply of bread from this cereal as well. Then 
 suppose the miller of that neighborhood, on whom 
 the neighbors were dependent, should decree one 
 or the other of two things ; either to destroy all the 
 wheat bread on hand, or to grind no more flour from 
 wheat. Which would be worse for that community ? 
 It is manifest that the latter would be infinitely 
 worse ; for, in that event, the temporary supply of 
 wheat bread would have to suffice for all time to 
 come. On the other hand, merely to destroy the
 
 THE FIFTY-CENT DOLLAR. 85 
 
 existing supply of wheat bread would only produce 
 temporary straits until more wheat might be 
 ground. The government has not destroyed any of 
 the existing supply of silver money (by denying it 
 legal tender quality), but it is doing as bad or 
 worse, in declaring against the coining of silver in 
 the future. We hear no promise in behalf of silver 
 from those who secured existing legislation. And 
 we are to-day without any law by which to replen- 
 ish our future money supply with silver. While 
 the present supply is being worn out and destroyed, 
 we are increasing in population at the rate of more 
 than a million souls a year. 
 
 With the silver supply being reduced, popula- 
 tion increasing, and gold constantly going out of 
 the country, is it difficult to perceive the quiet, eat- 
 ing process of contraction that has been provided 
 for our once active, prospering and developing 
 country? 
 
 Q. When the term free coinage is used, is it 
 meant that the government should coin silver and 
 not charge seigniorage or mintage? 
 
 A. Let us go back to the miller again. If he 
 should stop grinding wheat, and Defuse ever to 
 grind any more, there w r ould be mutiny among the
 
 86 THE FIFTY-CENT DOLLAR. 
 
 neighbors. But there would need be no trouble, 
 and certainly no ground for complaint, should the 
 miller resume the grinding of wheat on a charge of 
 toll equal to the labor and expense of running the 
 mill. 
 
 Q. Should the government give 100 cents for 
 50 cents worth of silver, and thus enrich the silver 
 miners of the West? 
 
 A.- A man, insane with jealousy, once de- 
 stroyed his own eyesight and hearing, that he might 
 not see and hear the triumphal display given in 
 honor of a rival. It is just such insanity as this 
 that makes the point against silver that it would 
 benefit the silver miner 
 
 But to return to the question : The govern- 
 ment should give neither 100 cents nor one cent for 
 silver. Nothing was further from the minds of 
 those who made the Constitution, than that the 
 government treasury should become a warehouse 
 for the buying and storing of silver bullion. The 
 government should coin silver as the Constitution 
 provides. 
 
 Q. At what ratio ? 
 
 A. In the light of our past experience 16 to 1 
 would be a fair ratio. As before stated, the silver
 
 THE FIFTY-CENT DOLLAR. 87 
 
 bullion in a dollar was worth more than the gold 
 bullion in a dollar when silver was demonetized in 
 1873. 
 
 Q. But has there not been a great deal more 
 silver than gold produced since that time? 
 
 A. In the United States there has been ; but 
 in the entire world, including the United States, 
 only about 8 per cent, more of silver than gold has 
 been produced since 1873, estimated at their coined 
 values. 
 
 Q. Can we have two standards of value? 
 
 A. It is possible. 
 
 Q. How ? 
 
 A. By having a gold or silver dollar at a pre- 
 mium ; thus giving us one. dollar worth more than 
 a hundred cents of the other. Silver advocates do 
 not think that the government, in proper hands, 
 would ever be responsible for such thing as that ; 
 nor do they fear that the people at large will bring 
 about such condition of things, in their use of the 
 two metals as money. But under our present laws 
 and financial management, such thing may well be 
 feared from money-mongers who have it in their 
 power to corner not only the gold coin of the coun- 
 try, but the gold bullion as well. Only a short
 
 THE FIFTY-CENT DOLLAR. 
 
 while ago (May 8, 1895,) the newspapers of the 
 country stated that the Rothschilds and their 
 American allies were paying more for gold bullion, 
 in order to keep it from our mints, than the same 
 gold is worth for coining into dollars. 
 
 Q. Might they not corner the silver too? 
 
 A. If so, then we should increase the difficulty 
 on them. For example, when Russell Sage, some 
 months ago, was making way with five hundred 
 thousand dollars in gold to deposit vaults, in order 
 to remove it from circulation, the difficulty and in- 
 convenience of such a performance would have 
 been greatly increased had the sum been twice that 
 amount, and the other half been in silver dollars. 
 
 Q. What is our unit of value? 
 
 A. There now ! If one will consult the coinage 
 laws of the country he will find that the first 
 statute, under the Constitution, providing for coin- 
 ing money from gold and silver, was passed in 1792, 
 wherein it was enacted that a certain quantity of 
 gold should be coined into "dollars or units;" also 
 that a certain quantity of silver should be coined 
 into "dollars or units" The word "units" in each 
 case is convertible with the word "dollars," without 
 reference to the number of grains, either of gold
 
 THE FIFTY-CENT DOLLAR. 89 
 
 or silver, necessary to make a dollar. The unit is 
 the dollar. But, if it is the number of grains in 
 the dollar that should constitute the unit, then 371i 
 grains of pure silver should be that unit; for it 
 took that to make a dollar in 1792, and it has never 
 been changed, whether silver bullion was above or 
 below par. All the subsequent confusion as to the 
 
 * 
 
 unit of value has crept into this subject by abuse 
 of the first simple language employed. 
 
 Q. Did not the Act of 1873, however, provide 
 that the gold dollar, "at the standard weight of 
 25i 8 o grains, shall be the unit of value?" 
 
 A. It did, indeed, and did more : It demon- 
 etized the silver dollar. Members of Congress who 
 voted for the law were as ignorant of the one pro- 
 vision as of the other. And it took the two to 
 make the foundation for all the financial trouble 
 that has followed. 
 
 Q.--In answer to the first question, is it inti- 
 mated that advocacy of the gold standard in this 
 country is treason? 
 
 A. There are millions of patriots in this coun- 
 try who are on that^side from conviction. There 
 are some who take that side for craven or selfish 
 reasons, regardless of convictions. There is still 
 7
 
 90 THE FIFTY-CENT DOLLAR. 
 
 another class, who, in order to accomplish their dia- 
 bolical purposes, have not scrupled, and will not 
 scruple, to embarrass the government and distress 
 the people. The latter class are traitors. 
 
 Q. If, as so many earnestly insist, the silver 
 side of this question is right, and for the best inter- 
 est of this country as a whole, how does it happen 
 that monometallists call themselves "sound money" 
 men, and "honest money" men, and designate their 
 newspapers and clubs and conventions accordingly? 
 
 A. There can be but one explanation for that. 
 It is simply monumental arrogance and impudence, 
 equal to anything in that line of which His Satanic 
 Majesty was ever guilty. Such terms might be ex- 
 pected from the hirelings who do their miserable 
 bidding for so much a week ; but they disgrace 
 those who, dealing with the question as patriotic 
 American citizens, assume that dishonesty of mind 
 and purpose controls those who differ witft them, 
 whether right or wrong. 
 
 Q. During the quarter of a century preceding 
 1873, gold to the extent of about seven hundred 
 millions of dollars was produced and coined in this 
 country, and only a small amount of silver was pro- 
 duced during the same time ; and this was a period
 
 THE FIFTY-CENT DOLL A P. 91 
 
 of great prosperity. Was it not due to the small 
 quantity of silver? 
 
 A. That is the peculiar argument of the mono- 
 metallist ; but the bi-metallist rather thinks this 
 prosperity was due to the large supply of money 
 added to our currency. 
 
 Q. But was not gold then considered the bet- 
 ter money throughout the world ? 
 
 A. No; at the beginning of that very period 
 gold became "stuff" with the lofty people of 
 Germany and Austria, and was demonetized by 
 those two governments. England might have done 
 the same thing, had not selfishness previously 
 struck out there in the opposite direction, and se- 
 cured the demonetization of silver. Indeed it was 
 more pardonable for Germany and Austria to de- 
 monetize gold than for England to demonetize 
 silver ; for if the world had to do without either as 
 money, it could infinitely better spare gold than 
 silver. Gold is the better money for large transac- 
 tions. But, for that limitless, ceaseless commerce 
 which gives employment and life to the great work- 
 ing masses, guaranteeing general prosperity and 
 distributed wealth, silver is incomparably the bet- 
 ter money.
 
 THE FIFTY-CENT DOLLAR. 
 
 Q. Is not the fact that silver is an unwieldy 
 sort of metal, the secret of the people's prejudice 
 against it? 
 
 A. The secret mentioned is like many other 
 slanders ; it has no existence in fact. The masses 
 are not prejudiced against silver, and they joyously 
 handle it when opportunity presents, while gold is 
 seldom seen or handled at all. The banks and the 
 rich are prejudiced against silver. It is a little 
 bulky for their business. They express their preju- 
 dice for that of the people at large, and others 
 
 
 
 sometimes ape them. 
 
 Q. Are there not millions of silver dollars 
 now in the national treasury which the people will 
 not use? 
 
 A. By no means. That is money the people 
 cannot use. Silver certificates are out against it. 
 The government cannot pay it out twice ; if so, it 
 might keep up with current expenses, which it has 
 been unable to do under our gold standard system. 
 The silver in the treasury is simply accounted for 
 by the fact that it represents silver certificates, 
 issued under laws providing for the purchase of 
 silver bullion, instead of coining it. Those who go 
 to the treasury to exchange paper money for coin,
 
 THE FIFTY-CENT DOLLAR. 93 
 
 do not want gold any more than they want silver, 
 except for the purpose of looting the government 
 of bonds, by running down the gold reserve. The 
 masses, who have no such evil designs," are content 
 with whatever money falls into their hands, without 
 going to the treasury to exchange it for some other 
 form of money. 
 
 Q. If we should make money out of silver, 
 why not make it of pig iron, and give it legal ten- 
 der quality? 
 
 A. That taunting suggestion, so often made 
 by mone-metallists, besides being peurile, is a 
 bastard offspring born of a spirit of insubordina- 
 tion to law. There is no authority for making 
 money of pig iron. And the man who suggests it, 
 as a means of ridiculing any money recognized by 
 the constitution, would not hesitate to trample that 
 constitution under his feet. 
 
 Q. Why is it stated that bankers are not safe 
 leaders of thought on the financial question ? 
 
 A. There is nothing new in that idea. It is as 
 old as civilization. ' 
 
 Bankers are money changers, non-producers 
 the absorbers of wealth, not the creators of it 
 manipulators of dollars ; hence can only see pros-
 
 THE FIFTY-CENT DOLLAR. 
 
 perity (to themselves) in increasing the purchasing 
 power of each dollar. Not being the producers of 
 anything, they naturally want each dollar to pur- 
 chase the greatest amount possible of what is pro- 
 duced by others. In the meantime, the producers 
 on the outside are equally interested in pushing 
 their products whether of brain or muscle and 
 in trying to keep the dollar from rising. There is 
 a natural rivalry, therefore, between the bankers 
 and the producing classes. The banker'earns his 
 profits largely from money put into his hands by 
 others, who usually receive no interest for the use 
 of that money. If interest is paid by the banker, 
 more interest is charged. His earnings are in dol- 
 lars, not in property. The more property these 
 dollars will absorb, therefore, the greater his gain?. 
 The banker's prejudice against silver, in favor 
 of gold or paper, is easily accounted for. A given 
 sum of money can be counted in $20 gold pieces 
 just twenty times as fast as it can possibly be 
 counted in silver. Silver is a cumbersome sort of 
 money with which to settle balances between banks, 
 even in the same city or community. Wealthy de- 
 positors (on whom the banker most depends) want 
 gold or paper on their checks, and not silver. They
 
 THE FIFTY-CENT DOLLAR. 95 
 
 would soon remove their deposits from a bank that 
 would offer them large sums in silver. Gold usually 
 finds its way to the banks, and is little handled by 
 the people at large, while silver is in constant use, 
 and in the hands of the people. Added to all this 
 is the fact that national banks derive their life and 
 existence from United States bonds. 
 
 For the foregoing reasons, it is manifestly 
 natural that the banker should see profit to himself 
 in contraction on the one hand, and in the exter- 
 mination of silver on the other. 
 
 Bankers, as a class, are the equal of any other 
 profession or calling in sagacity, and if the pros- 
 perity of an entire people could be identical in 
 every particular with the prosperity of the banker, 
 it would be entirely safe to follow him. That there 
 is, however, one interest in common between bank- 
 ers and the producing classes on the outside, there 
 can be no question ; and this the banker persists in 
 not seeing, to-wit : When enterprise and develop- 
 ment, through contraction, have been strained to 
 the point of creating an inactive currency, the 
 banker ceases to earn profits from the money of 
 others in his hands. It then lies idle in his vaults, 
 while those on the outside are suffering for what it
 
 96 THE FIFTY-CENT DOLLAR. 
 
 will buy. From this evil the bankers have suffered 
 with the rest of the people during the past five 
 years. 
 
 Q. Would not the free coinage of silver' create 
 inflation of prices, and cause abnormal develop- 
 ment? 
 
 A. That is a question which should be fought 
 out by monometallists themselves. Some teach 
 that doctrine. Others teach the opposite, to- wit, 
 that it would drive our gold away and produce con- 
 traction. There is still another unique class 
 (among them Professor Laughlin) who teach both 
 doctrines. The last named are on safe ground; 
 just as the man was who shot at something in the 
 bushes which he didn't see, so as to hit if it was a 
 deer, and miss if it was a calf. 
 
 Q. It is stated that the silver dollar stands on 
 its own merits. Now, if it is not true that.it is 
 backed by the gold dollar, how is it that one in 
 Mexico can buy a dinner, pay for it with a United 
 States silver dollar, and receive back in change a 
 Mexican coin containing more silver than the United 
 States dollar? 
 
 A. That is a familiar illustration, and always 
 used strange to say by the monometallist, while
 
 THE FIFTY-CENT DOLLAR. 97 
 
 it proves more for the advocate of silver. If we 
 had any law providing for the redemption of a sil- 
 ver dollar with a gold dollar, the illustration might 
 be serviceable to monometallism ; but having no 
 such law, let us see where the illustration ends. 
 In the first place, Mexico is a foreign country only 
 in a political sense, not in a geographical sense. 
 Hence there is more or less traffic between the two 
 countries where the money of one or the other gov- 
 ernment is immediately used. Now, the mono- 
 metallist plants himself upon the rock, that a dol- 
 lar is only valuable for what is in it (intrinsic 
 worth), unless redeemable in some other sort of 
 dollar. Unquestionably wheat is also valuable for 
 its intrinsic worth. So we have : The more metal 
 the more intrinsic worth ; and the more wheat the 
 more intrinsic worth. Suppose, then, the citizen 
 of the United States should use wheat instead of 
 silver in paying for his Mexican dinner. Would he, 
 on paying for that dinner with a sack of wheat con- 
 taining one bushel, get back in change a sack con- 
 taining more than a bushel of wheat? 
 
 The United States dollar is a better dollar than 
 the Mexican dollar, because the United States gov- 
 ernment is a better government, and its people a
 
 98 THE FIFTY-CENT DOLLAR. 
 
 superior people. An Englishman will give more 
 for a United States dollar than for a Mexican dol- 
 lar when promised in a bond, and we have seen that 
 he makes no distinction between our silver dollars 
 and gold dollars. Our silver dollar is valuable be- 
 cause the government is behind it. not because a gold 
 dollar is behind it. The government is behind both 
 alike, by making each a legal tender for the pay- 
 ment of debts, public and private. So long as a 
 silver dollar will pay as much as a gold dollar, just 
 so long will it buy as much as a gold dollar. It is 
 the government that determines what the silver 
 dollar will pay, hence it is the government that 
 keeps up the silver dollar. It is keeping it up in 
 spite of the low price of silver bullion. 
 
 But nothing seems to distress the average 
 monometallist so sorely as the fact that our govern- 
 ment has anything to do with or power over our 
 finances. It appears to be his preference to have 
 our financial affairs controlled by individuals ; and 
 the fewer the better. 
 
 Q. Isn't gold behind the silver certificate 1 ? 
 
 A. Just as silver is. Both are behind it under 
 the law, which makes it redeemable in coin gold or 
 silver at the will of the government, and not at the
 
 THE FIFTY-CENT DOLLAR. 99 
 
 will of the holder. Mr. Carlisle, however, reversing 
 this order, put gold alone behind silver certificates 
 and all other forms of paper money ; and his per- 
 formance has thus far cost the American people 
 more than one hundred and fifty millions of need- 
 less bonds the principal and interest of which 
 debt is about 20 per cent, of the entire circulating 
 medium of this country. His policy is to increase 
 our credit by reducing our cash. And as one means 
 of justifying his course he has taken up the argu- 
 ment (most remarkable, considering the source) 
 that checks, drafts and bills of exchange have 
 greatly reduced the necessity for a circulating 
 medium. Those who respect Mr. Carlisle's intellect 
 (and no one questions that) must find it difficult 
 to believe that he sincerely makes this argument. 
 When Smith gives his check for $100 to Brown for 
 a horse, and Brown endorses the check to Jones, 
 and Jones endorses to Johnson, &c., the check in 
 every instance is doing no more nor less than $100 
 would do ; and the $100 had to exist before the 
 check could be given. Checks and drafts undoubt- 
 edly facilitate commerce^ but they constitute no 
 part of the currency, and cannot take the place of 
 a dollar of our circulating medium. The trouble
 
 100 THE FIFTY-CEXT DOLLAR. 
 
 with our present financial policy is that it tends to 
 exact two of Brown's horses for Smith's $100 check, 
 when one horse might have secured it under condi- 
 tions more favorable to trade and commerce. Mr. 
 Carlisle, in his public addresses, pictures the direful 
 consequences of silver legislation ; reminding the 
 people that it would contract the currency", causing 
 paralysis to commerce and pressure upon the debtor 
 by the creditor. This sort of reasoning might be 
 availing were it not for the fact that similar condi- 
 tions, though worse than his imagination pictures, 
 have prevailed under the system which he now de- 
 fends. 
 
 When a gifted man becomes eccentric in his 
 administration of a public office, his eccentricity 
 greatly distances that of an ordinary mortal. Of 
 this truth Lord Bacon was an illustrious example. 
 
 Q. Can we attempt a financial system of our 
 own, independent of all other nations? 
 
 A. An essential feature of every organized 
 government is its financial system ; and to ac- 
 knowledge dependence in that particular is a con- 
 fession of dependence in every particular. We se- 
 cured our political independence of England when 
 the entire population of this country was about
 
 THE FIFTY-CENT DOLLAR. 101 
 
 equal to that of New York City and Brooklyn to- 
 day. Yet, with our seventy millions of people and 
 our limitless resources, it is seriously doubted 
 whether we can now maintain a financial system 
 that is not dictated by the Rothschilds and their 
 American coadjutors. There can be no such thing 
 as an international monetary system until each 
 country, bg legislation, makes the money of other 
 countries legal tender among its own people. Life, 
 even of a nation, is rather too short to wait for such 
 thing as that. 
 
 Q. Does the coining of a given amount of 
 silver and calling it a dollar make it a dollar? 
 
 A. By no means. Such suggestions only come 
 from those who fail to comprehend that money gets 
 its function from the legal tender quality imparted 
 to it by law. To be worth 100 cents the silver dol- 
 lar must be made good for the payment of public 
 and private debts to the extent of 100 cents. When 
 that is done, it is worth as much, as the gold dollar r 
 which can do no more than pay 100 cents. The 
 trade dollar is stamped 100 cents, and has more 
 silver in it than the legal tender silver dollar, but 
 is only so much silver bullion, worth its market 
 price ; because the government, after creating it r
 
 THE FIFTY-CENT DOLLAR. 
 
 deprived it of legal tender quality. Thus emascu- 
 lated, it is not money at all. 
 
 Q. If this financial question is largely an issue 
 between this country and England, how is it that 
 the section of the United States known as the East 
 is so strong for monometallism? 
 
 A. The relations of the South and West to 
 the East on this question are in many respects sim- 
 ilar to those of the entire country to England. The 
 East largely controls the currency of this country ; 
 and the South and West are largely indebted to 
 that section. The East consumes Western wheat, 
 and manufactures Southern cotton, hence is inter- 
 ested in keeping the price of each down. The 
 monied interests of the East, therefore, incline 
 naturally to a financial system that is best calcu- 
 lated to absorb the wealth of the other sections of 
 the country. In the meantime the masses in the 
 East are not benefitted. A contracting currency 
 affects the masses unfavorably everywhere. 
 
 Q. Would Mexico and China be where they 
 are, but for the fact that they are exclusively silver 
 countries? 
 
 A. Those two countries have been used most 
 successfully to create prejudice against silver in
 
 THE FIFTY-CENT DOLLAR. 103 
 
 this country. It has never been proposed to use 
 silver exclusively in the United States, hence the 
 parallel fails in the outset. 
 
 The miserable condition of the Chinese, so far 
 as their money affects them, is more due to their 
 lack of silver than to their use of it. With their 
 small supply of money (about $2 per capita) their 
 commerce is better conducted with silver than it 
 could possibly be with gold, and a substitution of 
 gold for silver would lower their condition. Turkey 
 is a gold standard country, with a per capita sup- 
 ply about equal to that of China. Why do not our 
 monometallists cite that country as a shining exam- 
 ple of civilization and advancement? It is little 
 more than a barbaric race far behind China and 
 Mexico in everything going to make a thrifty, en- 
 terprising people. 
 
 The Mexicans are a race gangrened with vice 
 and thriftlessness. Their silver product is their 
 chief source of life, and sustains them against a 
 much lower condition. Had they more enterprise 
 their returns, in the form of home products, would 
 be many times greater than those realized from 
 silver, exchanged for the products of other coun- 
 tries. They prefer idleness, while living in huts
 
 104 THE FIFTY-CENT DOLLAR. 
 
 and, as far as possible, upon native fruits. They 
 trade their silver, coined and uncoined, to other 
 countries, instead of utilizing it as a circulating 
 medium at home. In the meantime a gold stand- 
 ard would do for Mexico what it would do for 
 China put it in- a still worse condition and more 
 at the mercy of other countries. Mexico and China, 
 with their wretched governments and still more 
 wretched people, are held up as scare-crows only 
 by those who would persuade the American people 
 that they are not a superior race to Chinamen and 
 Mexicans. Those who innocently resort to such 
 tactics do so through ignorance of the fact that sil- 
 ver has never done any possible harm to Mexico or 
 China. 
 
 History wholly fails to teach that the use of 
 either gold or silver as money ever made a nation 
 great or kept it from becoming so. But history 
 does teach that the more limited the supply of 
 money (whether from necessity or choice) the more 
 dwarfed the nation, and the wider the gulf between 
 the rich few and the poverty-ridden masses. This 
 is true, whether the money in use be silver or gold, 
 as illustrated by the three countries, Mexico, Tur- 
 key and China. France, on the other hand, is an
 
 THE FIFTY-CENT DOLLAR. 105 
 
 example in the opposite direction. With a greater 
 volume of money than any other country in the 
 world ($36 per capita), wealth is more evenly dis- 
 tributed there than in any other country; and her 
 people are more thrifty and better contented than 
 any other people on earth. 
 
 Mr. Carlisle says that England was five hun- 
 dred years discovering that bi-metallism was a 
 failure. It is remarkable that it took so long to 
 discover the fact, with a daily test of the proof. It 
 is still more remarkable that the United States 
 and Germany were more than half a century find- 
 ing out what England had discovered, and have 
 never yet been content with the proof. But a still 
 more remarkable fact was the sudden dawning of 
 this English discovery upon Mr. Carlisle, after 
 twenty years of illustrious public service devoted 
 to denying that such discovery had ever been made. 
 
 The great nations that have sought to reduce 
 their money supply by demonetization, are great in 
 spite of the fact, and not by reason of it. England 
 does not date her greatness from 1816, nor do the 
 United States and Germany date their greatness 
 from 1873. The periods mentioned represent those 
 stages in a country's development when the power 
 8
 
 106 THE FIFTY-CENT DOLLAR. 
 
 of accumulated wealth becomes a menace to gov- 
 ernment, which it uses to rob the masses. George 
 Washington, Thomas Jefferson, Benjamin Frank- 
 lin and John Hancock were among the wealthiest 
 men of their day in this country. They were also 
 among our foremost statesmen and patriots. But 
 advancement of a nation destroys this parity be- 
 tween great wealth and patriotism. Few of the 
 multi-millionaires of the present day have even 
 political convictions. Politics with them is like 
 everything else it is business, 
 
 Demonetization is not the normal, but the 
 fungous growth, which attends civilization and ad- 
 advancement. It was reached here sooner than in 
 Europe, because development and wealth grew 
 faster here. Demonetization never originates with 
 the people at large, nor with the government itself, 
 but with the few who become powerful enough to 
 dictate to government. This fact is now being il- 
 lustrated every day, in the strenuous efforts to 
 show that at least members of Congress knew what 
 was done in 1873 ; though it is admitted on all sides 
 that the most of them did not know what was being 
 done. Indeed they have about all admitted it 
 themselves. And it is well known that the people
 
 THE FIFTY-CENT DOLLAR. 107 
 
 had demanded nothing of the kind, and were 
 equally ignorant with the head of the government 
 of what was occurring in the way of legislation. It 
 was a mischievous child whose parentage will al- 
 ways be enveloped in mystery. 
 
 Those countries, including our own, which, 
 under some overwhelming influence, have stricken 
 silver, have been compelled at the same time to 
 recognize its necessity by its continued use. The 
 money scientist heretofore alluded to, Professor 
 Laughlin, in order to demonstrate that silver has 
 not been so badly treated after all, triumphantly 
 shows that the world uses more of it today than it 
 did twenty years ago. This increased supply has 
 been mainly secured in America, through the Acts 
 of 1878 and 1890. But why does Professor Laugh- 
 lin, and all like him, not admit that the source of 
 our silver supply was cut off in 1893; and that we 
 must eventually, under the present system, become 
 a race of miserable serfs to the holders of our bonds 
 (whether public or private) payable at last only in 
 gold. Why do they not cite us to some law where- 
 by we may go on forever using silver? Why does 
 Mr. Carlisle tell us that "silver is not now demone- 
 tized in this country, as it is in England, Germany
 
 108 THE FIFTY-CENT DOLLAR. 
 
 and other countries, but is in constant use among 
 the people as full legal tender money?" Does he 
 mean to felicitate the American people upon the 
 fact that the government has not confiscated the 
 silver already coined and allowed to the people as 
 money ! And does he mean to say that closing the 
 mints of this country to silver is not demonetiza- 
 tion? That is what the people understand by de- 
 monetization of silver. That was done in 1873, 
 and after a struggle of twenty years to restore it 
 (with partial success) was again done in 1893. 
 Since the latter deed was accomplished, have the 
 American people heard one word from the powers 
 that be, intimating that silver so far as the matter 
 concerned them was not doomed in this country 
 forever? The unsophisticated American citizen, so 
 much perplexed and so much bewildered on this 
 question, finds it impossible to understand the 
 theory upon which the two acts of demonetization 
 were passed. But the wiser ones are beset with the 
 same difficulty. For twenty-five years preceding 
 the first act we produced unprecedented quantities 
 of gold ; and silver was demonetized. During the 
 twenty years following we produced unprecedented 
 quantities of silver ; and silver was again demone-
 
 THE FIFTY-CENT DOLLAR. 109 
 
 tized. The conditions as to the two metals having 
 been reversed, why this second blow at silver'? 
 Had England no hand in all this? 
 
 England knows that with free coinage of 
 silver in this country, nothing could stay our 
 progress to a destiny that would distance her and 
 the whole earth besides. She knows that with the 
 balance of trade against us, four years would suf- 
 fice to absorb all our present supply of gold in the 
 payment of interest alone to that country. She 
 knows that with a gold standard, and no additions 
 to our currency from silver, we cannot preserve the 
 balance of trade, and that we would thus become 
 her hewers of wood and drawers of water forever. 
 
 The greatest annual gold product of the entire 
 world was $155,000,000 in 1853. The average an- 
 nual product since that year has not been far above 
 $100,000,000 ; and five of the years since 1853 it fell 
 below $100,000,000. This decline is taking place 
 while the world's population is increasing, and gold 
 is being more and more used in the arts and 
 sciences. The gold money of the world to-day is 
 about $2.50 to every individual. On reducing all 
 the countries of the earth to a gold standard (which 
 England seems to be rapidly accomplishing) our
 
 110 THE FIFTY-CENT DOLLAR. 
 
 share, on an equal divide, would be less than two 
 hundred millions less than the estimated annual 
 interest debt of this country to England, say noth- 
 ing of the principal. It is true, as before stated, 
 England would not (could not) have us pay all our 
 indebtedness at once, but would prefer to bleed us 
 slowly, that the draught of blood might be the more 
 fattening. 
 
 But should England be thus talked about? 
 No ; England's masses are as philanthropic as are 
 the masses in this country. It is, after all, the same 
 Shylock of whom Shakespeare wrote, who is afflict- 
 ing England alike with America. 
 
 We may, if we will, escape the yoke before it 
 is fastened upon our necks forever. In doing it, 
 however, we must avoid the mesmeric influence of 
 better times in the near future. They can, and 
 will, be forced by the same influences that forced 
 the needless hard times. Through this means every 
 effort is now being used, and will continue to be 
 used, to lull a long-suffering people into acqui- 
 escence. It is a question not alone for the present 
 generation, but for our children and posterity for- 
 ever. It is a question, however, that will be settled
 
 THE FIFTY-CENT-DOLLAR. Ill 
 
 in the present conflict, whether it shall last long or 
 be ended soon. 
 
 To achieve victory we must turn from those 
 who have deceived us with their pratings about 
 ratio, parity, yard-sticks and units. These terms 
 have their legitimate meaning as applied to money, 
 but they have been used to ensnare. Those using 
 them are so many Neros fiddling while Rome burns ; 
 and it was Nero himself who set fire to Rome. 
 
 Germany and other nations are looking on 
 hopefully at the present conflict in proud America. 
 To us is left the honor of leading in the assault 
 upon demonetization that juggernaut of the nine- 
 teenth century ; that form of repudiation most in- 
 famous ; that whited sepulcher, posing as a saint, 
 and exacting two drops of sweat, two pounds of 
 flesh, where one was promised. 
 
 When America shall have felled this monster, 
 other nations will rush to secure its death and 
 eternal burial. The palm will then be ours, and 
 the dawn of the twentieth century will disclose our 
 beloved country at the head of the column, leading 
 the nations of the earth to a still higher destiny. 
 It is America's birthright to lead, not to follow.
 
 EUGENt 
 L.O* ANO*ueS. CAi.4?*
 
 
 . 
 
 I 
 
 o 
 <$ 
 

 
 UC SOUTHERN REGIONAL LIBRARY FACILITY 
 
 000104395 9