The American People’s Money

Chapter II

THIRD DAY.

THE GOSPEL OF GREED.

“ Good morning, Mr. Sanders.  Are you too tired to talk this bright day ? ”

“ Not at all ;  there are some themes I never tire of.  I can say with Hamlet :

“ ‘ Why, I will fight with him upon this theme,
Until my eyelids do no longer wag.’

“ Talk is words ;  but behind this discussion are tremendous things—the progress of development, the happiness of the world, the whole onflood or arrestment of humanity.”

There was a pleasant-faced, fair-haired lady, of two or three and twenty, sitting upon the next seat across the aisle of the car.  At this point she spoke up, addressing Mr. Sanders.

“ Pardon,” she said, “ my mingling in your conversation ;  but I could not help but hear much of it yesterday, and I was greatly interested.  I would like to ask you a question.”

“ Certainly,” replied Mr. Sanders.

Mr. Hutchinson rose to his feet and said :

“ Take my seat, madam, alongside of Mr. Sanders.  You will hear better, and it does not affect me to ride backwards.”

“ Thank you,” said the young lady, changing her place.

“ I do not know,” she continued, “ anything about the financial questions, and I find many gentlemen equally ignorant ;  but I perceive that something is wrong.  Three years ago my father was esteemed a rich man ;  now he is so poor that our family is broken up, and I am on my way to California to visit my father’s brother, and hope to get a position as a teacher, so that I will not be a burden on any one.  But I cannot understand why it is, while the earth retains its fertility and mankind continue industrious, that labor cannot perpetually create wealth ;  why it is that food is less in price than the cost of producing it, and yet millions cannot secure enough to buy it ? ”

“ I tried to show yesterday,” replied Mr. Sanders, “ that these evils are due to a limitation upon the governmental medium of exchange, called money ;  an artificial interference with the natural conditions you speak of ;  a something, created by man, which cries out to the earth, ‘stop multiplying thy seed;’  to the muscles of man, ‘stop thy toil;’  to the mine, ‘close up thy mouth;’  to the ship, ‘sweep no more before the streaming and triumphant wind ;’  to the wild beasts, ‘you are safe in your fastnesses, for man shall advance no more ;’  to the whole human family, ‘stand still and shrink and suffer.’ ”

“ But is there not,” asked the young lady, “ a deeper cause than all this ?  Why, at this stage of the world’s development, should this great calamity burst forth upon the world ? ”

“ You are right, madam, ” replied Mr. Sanders, “ there is a deeper cause—a something grounded on the very nature of the animal man.  It is

HUMAN SELFISHNESS.

“ There are, we are told by the scientists, two great agencies operating upon the heavenly bodies—the centripetal force and centrifugal force ;  the one draws them together, and the other keeps them apart.  The sun, by the first, would drag the earth into the fiery embrace of its gigantic flames ;  the other would send it flying off into boundless space.  In the just balance and equipoise of these two huge powers the planets are held in their orbits and the harmony of the universe preserved.

“ So there is in human nature a centripetal force of selfishness which draws everything to the individual, and a centrifugal force called philanthropy, which reaches out to the mass ;  and it is only by the interplay of these great powers that human society is possible.

“ First, the brute animal, man, found the necessity of defending his own life against the whole world, in the prodigious and continuous battle of nature.  Then the centrifugal force was enlarged to take in his wife and children, and the smoke-blacked cave in the rock became a home.  Then the family, in course of time, broadened out into a clan, all kinsmen ;  thence into a tribe ;  thence into a race ;  thence into a nation.  These were all enlargements of the centripetal force.  The people stood together because they were of the same blood and spoke the same tongue.  In some of the old countries to this day the word ‘friend’ means a ‘relative.’  There could be no fellowship that did not grow out of a kindred descent.  Then as civilization progressed the centrifugal force came into play and the sense of what was best for the individual or his brother expanded into what was best for all the generations of men.  Man was forced out of himself into consideration of the mass.  Then came Christianity teaching the universal brotherhood of the occupants of the earth, and that there was over all a common Father, whose children, of all tongues and colors, were blood kindred, clansmen, moulded of one substance after a common pattern.

“ The curse of our age seems to be a rising up of the centripetal force and a sweeping away of the centrifugal.  This is perhaps due to the very progress of civilization.  In the old time a man expected to die in the station in which he was born ;  the peasant was always a peasant the prince forever a prince.  Now we have seen four poor boys shake the bog mud from their unshod feet, cross the ocean and the continent from Ireland to California, and become rich beyond the dreams of emperors.  We have seen a Carrickfergus weaver, spare, half-fed, but full of hereditary fire, migrate to America and fight a long hart fight with fate for enough to eat, and die in the struggle ;  but his son, who was wounded by an English officer because he refused to clean his boots, became the hero of New Orleans and President of the United States.  And still later we saw a rail-splitter, dwelling in a hovel without doors, windows or floor, rise to be a ‘ true-born king of men;’  a magnificent and tremendous genius.  So that in this age all things are possible.  The pauper becomes a prince and the prince a pauper.  Life is an immense scramble, and the blowpipe of possibility blows the dull coals of intellect into the white flame of action.  And all this tends to intensify the power which draws everything into the center of the individual, and the threads which tie man to his race and his age and his planet are melted in the fire of selfishness.  Hence history becomes, in the main, a record of appalling brutalities, and the man who oppresses is respected and the man who is oppressed is despised.  And science comes in, to gild with high-sounding phrases the rottenness of greed, ‘and the survival of the fittest’ is held a justification for the most ruthless barbarities ;  as if God himself had said, ‘ Kill them;’  and Saturn, devouring his children, pushes the merciful Christ from his heavenly footstool.”

“ That is strongly stated,” said Mr. Hutchinson, “ but is it true ?  Do the aristocracy deserve such a sweeping condemnation ? ”

“ Deserve,” replied the farmer, “ why look at the case of Ireland !  Look at the English landlord sitting with his legs around the huge pot-pie, indignantly glaring at the poor, humble peasant, because he has to give him a fragment to enable him to live.  And yet the Irishman, by rights, owns the whole pie ;  his ancestors, for thousands of years, possessed the land from which the materials were raised that made the pie.  It was wrested from him by superior weapons and greater numbers—confiscated.  And on this confiscated land, as all humble tenant, he has raised the mutton and the flour and potatoes that made that pie.  And see how the ogre indignantly regards him, because he insists on having something to eat while he works !  Why could not a slave be invented that would toil without consuming ?  Steam and electricity come pretty near it, but not quite.  Oh, for a workman all muscle and no stomach !  Oh, for a cow all tenderloin and milk-bag.

“ Then look at London’s swarming streets—the waxy-faced, starving people—her own people—massed hungrily on the corners or gathered around shop-windows—no two of them allowed to stop and talk together on Trafalgar square lest a mob assemble and the Empire disappear like the dream of a dyspeptic !  And yet England has her billions loaned abroad on which her tens of thousands live in idle and magnificent luxury.  One Englishman gluts and gorges and another Englishman starves and dies ;  and civilization and statesmanship propose no remedy.  And science prattles about the survival of the fittest, as if it was fore-ordained and inevitable.

“ And kraft, power, degenerates into craft, cunning ;  and king is derived from the same root as cunning.  No better man lives than the individual Englishman, but this ruling class, in all ages, has been cruel, arrogant and heartless ;  as merciless to its own people as it was to all the rest of the world.  But we need not abuse them.  They are worse than others probably because they have had more opportunity than others.  The qualities that go to make oppression are simply inordinate selfishness, which grabs all it sees and would make a dining table of the dead bodies of its dead victims.  It has given up cannibalism, simply because there was an abundance of other kinds of food ;  but there isn’t much difference between eating a man’s body and devouring his substance so that he perishes.  One is a physical, the other a moral cannibalism.  And there are many men who would rather be eaten after death than eaten before death.

“ But, oh ! greed, greed, greed !

THE DARWINIAN THEORY.

“ There has been a great deal of discussion of late years as to the descent of man from the monkeys.  The monkey is a mean creature, we admit, a chattering, little, inconsequential, dirty beast, but he does not begin to explain the human family.  It would seem as if before man was created, the elements that go to make up his character had already been developed and used in the animal kingdom.  Man was a special creation and no accident ;  but just as his nerves, muscles and bones repeat, more or less accurately, all the vertebrated creatures that had lived on earth before him, so into his mental constitution entered their various dispositions.  And so in the genus homo we will find the dash of the lion and the cowardice of the jackal ;  the ferocity of the tiger and the gentleness of the dove ;  the wisdom of the elephant and the fantastic variety of the ape.  Their very faces speak these various lines of mental descent, and you will see lion-faced men and horse-faced men and rabbit-faced men and giraffe-headed men.  You will also see ox-eyed women and paroquet women, and ‘the painted jays of Italy,’ and snake-eyed women and nightingale women.  There is nothing so like the female human, however, as the female chicken.  Their ways are a delicious caricature of the creatures so dear to us.  But if one were to ask me what animal the successful plutocrat most closely resembled as a class (of course there are exceptions) I should say-the hog.

“ Oh, you certainly do not mean that,” cried the young lady.

“ Only in a metaphorical sense, my dear madam,” replied Mr. Sanders.  “ Paul tells us we have a temporal body and a spiritual body.  There are physical bristles and moral bristles, and I have seen men—and some women too—whose skins were smooth as paper and perfumed like the aroma

‘ Which told the world-seeking Genoese
The Indian isles were nigh.’

And who yet, to the spiritual perception, were covered with bristles and smelt of the sty.  There is part of us which even silks and satins will not cover.  The greedy men should go and look into a pig post at feeding time ;  and then, utterly abashed and ashamed, walk off and kneel down and ask God to squeeze some of the dirt out of his heart and give him less money and more soul, lest when he reappears in this visible world it should be in a sty.

“ I remember a story of a farmer who took all the prizes at the fairs around him for the great fatness of his hogs.  His emulous neighbors could not understand it ;  they fed their swine all they would eat, but at a certain point they stopped laying on fat.  Nature had got all it wanted and would go no farther.  And so they proceeded to spy upon the successful pork-raiser to find his secret.  At length they discovered it ;  it was based on an intimate acquaintance with hog and human intelligence.

“ When his animals had reached the point attained by his neighbors’ swine, and lay down contentedly to enjoy the sweets of ‘tired nature’s sweet restorer—balmy sleep—the balm of hurt minds, great nature’s second course,’ our ingenious friend put into the pen with him a poor, half-starved, hungry shoat.  Ah !  Then all the instincts of the millionaire were aroused in the porcine bosom.  What !  That wretched razor-back wants to get fat too !  Call out the military !  Where are Cleveland and Olney ?  The very foundations of society are being subverted !  All hogs are not created equal ;  they are not entitled to the equal pursuit of happiness ;  or if they are, they are not entitled equally to catch up with it—they can pursue it as much as they please.

“ But, as the monster of flesh cannot telephone to the administration at Washington, it does all that its environment will permit.  It turns and gorges the food for which before it had no appetite ;  it takes it in in great gobs ;  it shovels it down its throat, presenting its unreasoning extremity to the poor razor-back from whatever quarter he seeks to approach the trough.

“ Oh, the human delight of monopolizing a superfluity for which someone else is perishing !  Think how exquisite it is !  This it is that makes the Goulds and the Vanderbilts and the Rockefellers spend nights and days of ceaseless labor, while their brethren are squealing all around them, and dying for a morsel of that of which they have too much.  And the society of the 400 is only a kind of a hog-show, where men are rated by their financial weight, because it indicates how many shoats they have butted and bumped away from nature’s universal trough, wherein enough was provided for all by the Great Farmer, who amuses Himself keeping hogs.  It is most astonishing that God should make such creatures when there is no compulsion on him, and should put them into a world where there are saints and angels.  It is a thing no man can understand.

THE HOG IN HUMAN NATURE.

“ The hog in human nature is, indeed, ‘the direful spring of woes unnumbered.’  Eve ate the apple because she desired increase of knowledge.  Adam ate it because he was hungry.  God ought to have known the animal he had created too well to subject him to such a test.  He might just as well damn us all to-day because a usurer took 100 per cent. per annum interest on a chattel mortgage.  It was the hog in human nature that caused the Trojan war—that is, if it ever did occur—one hog running away with another hog’s wife.  It was the hog in human nature that sent the Roman eagles flying over the known world, turning warriors into peasants and peasants into slaves.  It was the hog in human nature—and a bloody and brutal hog too—that set the gladiators loose to slaughter each other, and gave up Christian martyrs to the wild beasts.  There is no record known, and no figures used by man that will tell the incalculable miseries inflicted on mankind, through thousands of years, in all parts of the world, by the human hogs called kings and conquerors.  They forced our forefathers to fly across the ocean, to the wilderness, to escape persecution for opinion’s sake ;  and when, by their industry, the immigrants had transformed the wilderness into a garden, they followed them up to enslave them.  But, glory be to God ! the red-coated hogs went scudding back whence they came, with their pretty little tails in the air, redder than their coats with their own blood.  And now, having found that cannon and guns cannot conquer us, they are ruining us by corrupting our Congress, and buying up our presidents, judges and newspapers.  We need another 1776 revolution, and it is coming ;  and when the surrender at Yorktown is reached again, it will be a surrender of the monsters of the whole world, and a Declaration of Independence will be proclaimed for all mankind.

“ Hogs !  You-can’t go even into the day-car in front of us without seeing one or two of them.  You will behold a great, fat fellow, with half a dozen bundles and valises.  He has paid for one seat and he spreads himself over half a dozen.  He puts his overcoat and umbrella in two seats across the aisle, and then he will tell the weary travelers who contemplate sitting down, that the two gentlemen who own the coat and umbrella have just stepped out, and will be back in a minute.  He gets in early, unlocks one of the seats and turns it over, and spreads himself and bundles over four places, his noble endowment of feet distributed widely over two of them, while he pretends to go to sleep with his head next the window on a pile of valises, presenting the most difficult part of his person for an interview to those who have paid just as much for their passage as he has.  And out of the corner of his eye he enjoys the sight of the crowd in the aisle—the pale woman with a child in her arms, the gray-haired old man, and all the rest ;  their misery is a kind of Worcestershire sauce to the palate of his enjoyment ;  he tastes it all the way down to his very boots.

“ But lo !  Authority appears on the scene—the brake man.  He represents law, order, justice, fair play.  He represents the community against the individual.  He yanks the hog up by the neck, and seats him, growling and swearing, where his head was ;  he turns back the seat and piles coat, umbrella, bundles and valises all on top of their owner, until he sits imbedded in debris, scowling furiously at the poor weary people who were standing and have taken the seats they paid for.

“ Selfishness has been suppressed.  Anarchy is over-thrown.  Law triumphs.  Justice is made manifest

. “ There is the solution of all our enigmas.  We are all passengers together on this vehicle, the earth, which is rushing forward at the rate of one thousand miles an hour.  We have all got our tickets from the President of the Company.

“ The stamp of man on our faces is the imprint of equality.  No one passenger has any more rights than another.  We are all God’s poor children.  Each is entitled to a place and a seat at the dining table.  We have paid our way by being human.  But the vehicle is all in confusion now.  The hogs have seized ten times as much space and food as they are entitled to, and thousands are standing and hungry.  And the aggressors have hired a multitude of the idle and vicious to defend them with weapons, in their unjust possessions ;  and they have bribed the brakemen, and they do not see the protruding, offensive corporosity, or the poor, tired passengers.  And the earth spins through space, while groans and cries and piteous appeals go up to God ;  and it is enfolded in misery as in a bloody garment ;  and it looks as if, in a little while, the hogs would be thrown out of the windows or the people be driven out onto the roof or the platforms.

“ How beautiful it is to see a well-ordered railway car ;  every seat occupied by intelligent, courteous passengers ;  no crowding, no grumbling, no complaints, but civility and kindness everywhere.  That is a picture of what this world can be made by the suppression of ‘ the hog in human nature.’  But the law must step in and say to the brute, ‘ Thus far shalt thou go and no farther.’  ‘ Here is room for all, and all must look after the equal rights of each.,

“ This whole battle between gold and silver is nothing but the outcome of ‘ the hog in human nature.’ ”

“ Indeed,” said the young lady, “ how do you prove that ? ”

“ Simply enough,” replied Mr. Sanders.

THE GOLD AND SILVER QUESTION.

“ Gold and silver were not made money by law.  No international convention ever met, in the first instance, in the the past ages, and agreed to adopt them.  As I said the other day, they were first the sacred metals of our ancestors, and then became the precious metals, because they were used to adorn the temples of the earth’s greatest gods, the sun and the moon.  Merchants bought them wherever they traded, along savage or civilized coasts, because they knew the priests, on their return home, would give them food and clothes and jewels for them.  But their whole use is a survival of primeval superstition.  Their beauty and compactness made them, it is true, desirable, and so they passed from hand to hand in a world-wide barter ;  and hence, when governments came to coin money, the stamp was naturally affixed to fragments of these convenient yellow and white metals.  They were valuable before they were money, and money before they were coined ;  and the barbarian races—rude and crude—had no idea of money that could not be weighed and melted ;  like some of our modern philosophers who will not believe there is anything in the universe that is not a ponderable entity.  The limitations of their senses they mistake for the limitations of Divinity ;  and what they cannot see they swear is not.  And hence we have a superstition of too little belief in place of the old-time superstition of too much belief.  One set of old women has been driven off, and another set of old women, of the other sex, called philosophers, substituted in their place.

“ Well, ” he continued, “ just as the sun and moon moved through the heavens, in silent and harmonious beauty—the greater and the lesser lights—so these metals which represented them, the one golden and sun-like, the other silvern and moon-like, rode through the domain of human civilization, bolding a relation in value much like the relation of the sun and moon in apparent size and power.  And as God permitted kings, as temporary leaders, until republics could be established, so he gave to man the use of these metals, until the power and majesty of vast and civilized peoples could be understood and stamped upon paper, and the intrinsic money theory forever relegated to the limbo of old world superstitions.

“ But down the ages these two metals carte hand in hand for probably more than 20,000 years.  There is no doubt they were the sacred metals of Atlantis eleven thousand years ago ;  and the legends tell us that there were ten thousand years between the settlement of Atlantis and its destruction.  During many ages, when sun and moon worship was the religion of all civilized peoples these metals were honored next to the heavenly luminaries themselves.

“ In all that vast lapse of time no attempt was ever made to divorce them until a quarter of a century ago, except in one instance, and that was in the year 221 A.D., and the lessons it teaches are most prophetic.  Through Egyptian, Assyrian, Grecian and Roman civilization, the yellow and the white metals moved hand in hand, as the basis of commerce and the symbols of wealth.  But in A.D. 221, in the reign of a vile emperor, for the purpose of still farther oppressing the suffering tax-payers of Rome and its provinces, and increasing the value of the money in which the taxes were paid, it was resolved to demonetize silver and make gold the only legal tender.  The consequences were very much the same as those which have overtaken ourselves.  A recent writer says :

“ ‘ Consequently prices fell lower and lower, the moneylenders received more and more in interest and principal, taxes became more and more burdensome, and producers were further discouraged by the constant depreciation of their property, which gradually fell into the hands of the creditor classes.  The property of the producing classes being exhausted without paying their debts, they became the slaves of their creditors.  All incentive to energy was destroyed and the classes that once formed the strength of Rome, from which the invincible legions were drawn—reduced as they were to slavery—were ready to welcome any change as a relief.  At the same time while the producing classes were reduced to a state of slavery, the creditor classes fell into a state of growing moral corruption—a state that is always brought about by the possession of unearned gains.  Thus reduced to impotency by slavery, ignorance, heathenism and moral corruption, the Roman Empire fell an easy victim to the hordes of barbaric Germans, who marched from one end of Italy to the other without meeting any serious resistance.’

THE ROMAN EMPIRE AND THE UNITED STATES COMPARED.

“ Indeed if one desires to understand the dangers which threaten our present civilization he has but to peruse the pages of Roman history.  In reading the following, from Froude’s Cæsar (p. 6), we seem to have before us an almost exact picture of our own times :

“ ‘ It was an age of material progress and material civilization ;  an age of civil liberty and intellectual culture ;  an age of pamphlets and epigrams, of salons and dinner parties, of senatorial majorities and electoral corruption.  The highest offices of state were open, in theory, to the meanest citizen ;  they were confined, in fact, to those who had the longest purses, or the most ready use of the tongue on popular platforms.  Distinctions of birth had been exchanged for distinctions of wealth.  The struggles between plebians and patricians for equality of privilege were over, and a new division had been formed between the party of property and a party who desired a change in the structure of society.  The free cultivators were disappearing from the soil.  Italy was being absorbed into vast estates, held by a few favored families and cultivated by slaves, while the old agricultural population was driven off the land and was crowded into towns.  The rich were extravagant, for life had ceased to have practical interest, except for its material pleasures ;  the occupation of the higher classes was to obtain money without labor and to spend it in idle enjoyment.  Patriotism survived on the lips, but patriotism meant the ascendancy of the party which would maintain the existing order of things, or (the party which) would overthrow it for a more equal distribution of the good things which alone were valued.  Religion, once the foundation of the laws and rule of personal conduct, had subsided into opinion.  The educated in their hearts disbelieved it.  Temples were still built with increasing splendor ;  the established forms were scrupulously observed.  Public men spoke conventionally of Providence, that they might throw on their opponents the odium of impiety ;  but of genuine belief that life had any serious meaning, there was none remaining beyond the circle of the silent, patient, ignorant multitude.  The whole spiritual atmosphere was saturated with cant—cant moral, cant political, cant religious ;  an affectation of high principle which had ceased to touch the conduct, and flowed on in an increasing volume of insincere and unreal speech. * * *
    “ ‘ The Romans ceased to believe, and in losing their faith they became as steel becomes when it is demagnetized, the spiritual quality was gone out of them, and the high society of Rome itself became a society of powerful animals with an enormous appetite for pleasure.  Wealth poured in more and more, and luxury grew more unbounded.  Palaces sprang up in the city, castles in the country, villas at pleasant places by the sea, and parks and fish ponds, and game preserves and gardens, and vast retinues of servants.  When natural pleasures had been indulged in to satiety, pleasures which were against nature were imported from the East to stimulate the exhausted appetite.  To make money—money by any means, lawful or unlawful—became the universal passion. * * *
    “ ‘ Moral habits are all-sufficient while they last ;  but with rude, strong natures they are but chains which hold the passions prisoners.  Let the chain break, and the released brute is but the more powerful for evil from the force which his constitution has inherited.  Money !  The cry was still money !  Money was the one thought from the highest senator to the poorest wretch who sold his vote in the Comitia.  For money judges gave unjust decrees and juries gave corrupt verdicts.  Governors held their provinces for one, two or three years ;  they went out bankrupt from extravagance, they returned with millions for fresh riot.  To obtain a province was the first ambition of a Roman noble.  The road to it lay through the prætorship and the consulship ;  these offices became, therefore, the prizes of the State, and being in the gift of the people they were sought after by means which demoralized alike the givers and the receivers.  The elections were managed by clubs and coteries, and, except on occasions of national danger or political excitement those who spent most freely were most certain of success.’

“ How precisely does all this depict the condition of affairs in the United States, in this year of grace 1895, over the whole land, from the Atlantic to the Pacific ?  One stumbling upon the passage, without the context, would swear that it referred to our own English-speaking people, instead of to a short, swarthy, sturdy, little race, living two thousand years ago on the Mediterranean, five thousand miles from our own shores.

“ So precisely do events produce the same conditions that to read of the political struggles which followed in ancient Rome is to have presented to us a striking panorama of the great battle now being fought in this country.

Listen to this from the same author (James Anthony Froude’s (1818-1894) ‘ Cæsar, a sketch,’  p. 20) :

“ ‘ Public spirit in the masses was dead or sleeping ;  the commonwealth was a Plutocracy.  The free forms of the constitution were themselves the instruments of corruption.  The rich were happy in the possession of all that they could desire.  The multitude was kept quiet by the morsels of meat that were flung to it when it threatened to be troublesome.  The ‘ seven thousand in Israel,’ the few who in all states and all times remain pure in the midst of evil, looked on with disgust, fearing that any remedy which they might try might be worse than the disease. * * * But it was not to be expected that men of noble natures, young men especially, whose enthusiasm had not been controlled by experience, would sit calmly by while their country was thus going headlong to perdition.  Redemption, if redemption was to be hoped for, could only come from free citizens in the country districts, whose manners and whose minds were still uncontaminated ;  in whom the ancient habits of life still survived ;  who still believed in the gods ;  who were content to follow the wholesome round of honest labor.  The numbers of such citizens were fast dwindling away before the omniverous appetite of the rich for territorial aggrandisement.  To rescue the land from the monopolists ;  to renovate the old independent yeomanry ;  to prevent the free population of Italy, out of which the legions had been formed which had built up the empire, from being pushed out of their places and supplanted by foreign slaves, this, if it could be done, would restore the purity of the constituency, snatch the elections from the control of corruption, and rear up fresh generations of peasant soldiers to preserve the liberties and the glories which their fathers had won.’ ”

“ Really,” said the young lady, “that might be published as an essay, in one of our magazines, as a description of the present political conditions, with the change of a word or two here and there.”

“ But,” said Mr. Hutchinson, “the effort at reform eventuated in Julius Cæsar and the Empire.”

“ That is true, ” replied Mr. Sanders, “ but the root of the evil was the corruption of the aristocracy, which, in turn, degraded and demoralized the common people, and ended in universal rottenness.  This destroyed the republic, and it finally overthrew the empire, and brought in the barbarians and chaos and old night.  It was brutal selfishness, ‘ the hog in human nature,’ which blindly rooted out the foundations of the temple of civilization and brought it down in ruin on its own head.

THE SUN AND MOON.

“ But the point I was trying to call your attention to was that, just as the sun and moon moved together through the heavens, so these, their typical metals, moved side by side, for hundreds of centuries, in the affairs of mankind ;  and that it would be as great an invasion of the orderly arrangements of nature to seek to pluck the moon from its orbit as it was to tear the white metal from the commercial firmament.

“ If any great cause had rendered it probable that such a course would be advantageous to mankind, then it would have been proper for the civilized nations to have fully considered it, in newspapers, conventions, legislative chambers, and in discussions by a million firesides ;  weighing carefully all the arguments for and against such a step, before taking action upon it.  See the tremendous debate that is now going on, all over the world, as to the restoration of silver to its ancient orbit.  Even such a debate, with such a clamor of tongues, with such an array of facts, figures and authorities, should have preceded any attempt to tear it out of the commercial sky.  Instead of that, silver was not the victim of an open and public war ;  it was secretly slain by the stilettos of hired banditti, in the darkness of the night.”

HOW SILVER WAS DEMONETIZED.

“ That charge,” said Mr. Hutchinson, “ has been made a hundred times and a hundred times disproved.”

“ Yes,” said the young lady, “ I read an article on the subject in ‘ The Light of Zion,’ the day before I left home, which clearly shows that it was publicly repealed with the full knowledge of the whole country.  I do not know much upon the subject myself, but I cannot believe a respectable newspaper would misrepresent the facts.”

“ Misrepresent ! ” cried Mr. Sanders ; “ why, my dear young lady, the newspapers of to-day would misrepresent anything.  If there was any considerable sum of money to be made by it they would unite in denying the existence of God !  If a million dollars were at stake they would so blackguard the memory of George Washington that the State of Virginia would rise up and throw his ashes into the Potomac !  ‘ Misrepresent ! ’  God gave man the alphabet, and the devil gave him the daily press.  The first widens the area of his knowledge and the second perverts truth and darkens understanding.

“ But here,” he continued, “ is the proof that the demonetization of silver was a secret fraud and trick and crime.  Go search all the newspapers of the United States for the year 1873, for weeks and months before and after the passage of the act, and you cannot find the slightest reference to the fact that the mints of the United States had been closed against the coinage of a money-metal more ancient than the pyramids or the tower of Babel.  Not a word ;  not a syllable.  There were numerous telegrams from Washington, at that time, on all sorts of inconsequential matters, but not a sentence as to a change in our laws which is now widely and deeply agitating the people of our whole country, and indirectly of the whole world.

“ Take all the platforms, state or national, of all the parties, since the formation of our government down to and including 1873, and I challenge the defenders of this iniquity to put their fingers upon a single declaration demanding the demonetization of silver, or demanding anything hostile to the white metal.  There is nothing of the kind.  By what right did Congress dare to make such a radical and fundamental change in the financial system of this country without being urged to do so by any political party of any kind ?  Nothing but bribery and corruption of the rankest description could account for such a step.

“ Call the roll of all the eminent men of this nation, since the constitution was adopted, down to and including 1873—men of all creeds and parties and sections—and where can a word or a line be quoted from any of their written or spoken utterances, asking that the doors of the mints be closed in the face of the prehistoric white metal ?  There is not one.  Do you know of any ? ”

“ I cannot say I do,” replied Mr. Hutchinson.

“ Well, do you know of any declaration of any platform, prior to 1873, demanding the demonetization of silver ? ”

“ I have not looked into the matter,” said Mr. Hutchinson, “ and therefore cannot answer your question.”

“ I will go a step farther,” said Mr. Sanders.  “ I undertake to say that from 1873 to this hour no national political party has ever dared to commend or make itself responsible for that act of 1873, or to sustain the demonetization of silver, except by trick and indirection.”

“ Do you mean to say,” inquired the banker, “ that the Republican party did not, in 1892, declare for the gold standard ? ”

“ Certainly not,” said the farmer.  “ Here is what they said (consulting his note book) :

“ ‘ The American people, from tradition and interest, favor bi-metallism, and the Republican party demands the use of both gold and silver as standard money, with restrictions and under such provisions to be determined by legislation, as will secure the maintenance of the parity of values of the two metals, so that the purchasing and debt-paying power of the dollar, whether of silver, gold or paper, shall be at all times equal.’ ”

“Ah,” said Mr. Hutchinson, “there you see the proviso is bigger than the resolution.”

“ I have no doubt,” was the reply, “ that the man who drew that plank intended it for a trick and a subterfuge ;  but even then there is no approval of the act of 1873, and there is nothing in it inconsistent with the restoration of silver to its ancient position.”

“ I do not so understand it,” said the other.  “ Observe what it says about ‘parity of values’ and debt-paying powers.  Does not that mean demonetization of silver ? ”

“ I do not undertake to say, ” was the reply, “ what the trickster meant who drew it, but the resolution, I repeat, is not inconsistent with true bi-metallism.  The ‘parity of values’ we had at all times prior to 1873.  If there was any difference it was on the side of silver, which was at a premium over gold when it was demonetized.  And even now, in spite of demonetization, the silver dollar in this country is at a parity of value with the gold dollar, and yet there is no law to compel the government to redeem silver in gold.”

“ Do you mean to say,” inquired the young lady traveler, “ that silver was worth more than gold when it was denied the right of being coined ? ”

“ Certainly,” said Mr. Sanders.  “ That is well understood.”

“ What excuse was there, then,” she inquired, “for demonetizing silver, especially if no political party and no leading statesmen had demanded it ? ”

“ There was none.  It was sheer villainy.  Not even the supple newspapers asked for anything of the kind.  In the midst of silence, and in the darkness of the night, the evil deed was consummated, and to this hour nobody will stand sponsor for it.”

“ I deny,” said Mr. Hutchinson, “ that it was done in the darkness of the night.”

TESTIMONY OF OUR LEADING STATESMEN.

“ Well,” replied the farmer, “ I have here (consulting his note book) the testimony of the leading members of the House and Senate at that time, of both parties.  I will first summon a leading Republican, Judge Kelly, of Philadelphia, the great protectionist ;  ‘Pig-iron Kelly’ he was called, a very able and honest man.  I find by the Congressional Record, volume 7, part 2, 45th Congress, second session, page 1605, that he said :

“ In connection with the charge that I advocated the bill which demonetized the standard silver dollar, I say that, though the chairman of the Committee on Coinage, I was as ignorant of the fact that it would demonetize the silver dollar or of its dropping the silver dollar from our system of coins as were those distinguished Senators, Messrs. Blaine and Voorhees, who were then members of the House, and each of whom, a few days since, interrogated the other :  ‘ Did you know it was dropped when the bill passed ? ’  ‘ No,’ said Mr. Blaine.  ‘ Did you ? ’  ‘ No,’ said Mr. Voorhees, ‘ I do not think there were three members in the house that knew it.  I doubt whether Mr. Hooper, who, in my absence from the Committee on Coinage and attendance on the Committee on Ways and Means, managed the bill, knew it.  I say this in justice to him.”

In the Congressional Record, February 15, 1878, page 1063, may be found the following :

“ Mr. Voorhees.  I want to ask my friend from Maine, whom I am glad to designate that way, whether I may call him as one more witness to the fact that it was not generally known whether silver was demonetized.  Did he know, as the Speaker of the House, presiding at that time, that the silver dollar was demonetized in the bill to which he alludes ? ”
    “ Mr. Blaine.  ‘ I did not know anything that was in the bill at all.  As I have said before, little was known or cared on the subject.  [Laughter.]  And now I should like to exchange questions with the Senator from Indiana, who was then on the floor and whose business, far more than mine, it was to know, because by the designation of the house I was to put the question ;  the Senator from Indiana, then on the floor of the House, with his power as a debater, was to unfold them to the House, Did he know ? ’
    “ Mr. Voorhees.  I frankly say that I did not.”

“ But I see,” replied Mr. Hutchinson, “that Prof. Laughlin quotes from another speech, made by Mr. Blaine, to the effect that the bill was discussed and its purpose understood.”

“ Yes,” replied Mr. Sanders, “ Mr. Blaine, as a public man, was bound to defend his party from the charge of having consummated such an iniquity ;  but he does not deny that he said just what is set down in the Congressional Record, p. 1063, February 15, 1878, that he ‘did not know anything that was in the bill at all—little was known or cared on the subject.’  Think of the Speaker of the House, the leader of his party, subsequently its candidate for the presidency, putting the question on the passage of the bill, and not knowing that it closed the mints of the United States against a metal which had been the money of all civilized nations, at a time when his ancestors were naked barbarians, possibly cannibals !  And if he did not know anything that was in the bill, how could less prominent and less able men, in Congress, be expected to know anything about it ?  And how much more improbable was it that the great mass of the American people, hundreds and thousands of miles distant from Washington, knew what was going on.

“ But I continue the testimony :

“ Senator Beck of Kentucky, Congressional Record, volume 7, part 1, Forty-fifth Congress, second session, page 260, said :

“ It [the bill demonetizing silver] never was understood by either House of Congress.  I say that with full knowledge of the facts.  No newspaper reporter—and they are the most vigilant men I ever saw in obtaining information—discovered that it had been done.”

“ Mr. Burchard of Illinois, Congressional Record, July 13, 1876, volume 4, part 5, page 4560, said :

“ The Coinage act of 1873, unaccompanied by any written report upon the subject from any committee, and unknown to the members of Congress who, without opposition, allowed it to pass under the belief, if not assurance, that it made no alteration in the value of the current coins, changed the unit of value from silver to gold.”

“ Mr. Holmes of Indiana, Congressional Record, volume 4, part 6, Forty-fourth Congress, first session, Appendix, page 193, said :

“ I have before me the record of the proceedings of this House of the passage of that measure, which no man can read without being convinced that the measure and the method of its passage through this House was a ‘ colossal swindle.’  I assert that the measure never had the sanction of this House, and it does not possess the moral force of law.”

“ Joseph Cannon, Congressional Record, volume 4, part 6, Forty-fourth Congress, first session, Appendix, page 197, said :

“ This legislation was had in the Forty-second Congress, February 12, 1873, by a bill to regulate the mints of the United States, and practically abolished silver as money by failing to provide for the coinage of the silver dollar.  It was not discussed, as shown by the Record, and neither members of Congress nor the people understood the scope of the legislation.”

“ Senator Voorhees of Indiana, Congressional Record, January 15, 1878, page 332, said :

“ The silver dollar is peculiarly the laboring man’s dollar, as far as he may desire specie. * * * Throughout all the financial panics that have assailed this country, no man has been bold enough to raise his hand to strike it down ;  no man has ever dared to whisper of a contemplated assault upon it ;  and when the 12th day of February, 1873, approached, the day of doom to the American dollar, the dollar of our fathers, how silent was the work of the enemy !  Not a sound, not a word, no note of warning to the American people that their favorite coin was about to be destroyed as money ;  that the greatest financial revolution of modern times was in contemplation and about to be accomplished against their highest and dearest rights !  The tax payers of the United States were no more notified or consulted on this momentous measure than the slaves on a southern plantation before the war, when their master made up his mind to increase their task or to change them from a corn to a cotton field.
    “ Never since the foundation of the Government has a law of such vital and tremendous import, or indeed of any importance at all, crawled into our statute books so furtively and noiselessly as this.  Its enactment there was as completely unknown to the people, and indeed to four-fifths of Congress itself, as the presence of a burglar in a house at midnight to its sleeping inmates.  This was rendered possible partly because the clandestine movement was so utterly unexpected, and partly from the nature of the bill in which it occurred.  The silver dollar of American history was demonetized in an act entitled ‘ An act revising and amending the laws relative to the mints, assay-offices, and coinage of the United States.’

“ Senator Beck, of Kentucky, Congressional Record January 11, 1879, page 258, said :

“ ‘ I know that the bondholders and monopolists of the country are seeking to destroy all the industries of the people in their greed to enhance the value of their gold.  I know that the act of 1873 did more than all else to accomplish that result, and the demonetization act of the Revised Statutes was an illegal and unconstitutional consummation of the fraud.  I want to restore that money to where it was before, and thus aid in preventing the consummation of their designs.’

“ Senator Allison, of Iowa, Congressional Record, volume 7, part 2, Forty-fifth Congress, 2d session, page 1085, said :

“ ‘ But when the secret history of this act of 1873 comes to be told, it will disclose the fact that the House of Representatives intended to coin both gold and silver, and intended to place both metals upon the French relation instead of our own, which was the true scientific position with reference to this subject in 1873, but that the bill was doctored, if I may use the term, and I use it in no offensive sense, of course.* * * * * *
    “ ‘ I said I used the word in no offensive sense.  It was changed after the discussion, and the dollar of 420 grains was substituted for it.’

“ Mr. Bright, of Tennessee, Congressional Record, volume 7, part 1, 2d session, Forty-fifth Congress, page 584, said :

“ ‘ It passed by fraud in the House, never having been printed in advance, being a substitute for the printed bill ;  never having been read at the clerk’s desk, the reading having been dispensed with by an impression that the bill was no material alteration in the coinage laws ;  it was passed without discussion, debate being cut off by operation of the previous question.  It was passed, to my certain information, under such circumstances that the fraud escaped the attention of some of the most watchful as well as the ablest statesmen in Congress at the time. * * * Aye, sir, it was a fraud that smells to heaven.  It was a fraud that will stink in the nose of posterity, and for which some persons must give an account in the day of retribution.’ ”

HOW THE CRIME WAS ACCOMPLISHED.

“ That the demonetization of silver was, as these Congressional witnesses testify (and every word, be it observed, is taken from the official record, page and book given), that it was, I say, a ‘colossal swindle,’ the work of a ‘burglar in the house at midnight,’ is shown by the very nature of the bill.  Was it entitled ‘an act to demonetize silver ? ’  Not at all.  It seemed to be purely a measure in relation to the mints and the details of coinage.  Nor does it anywhere appear that the act, by any section or part of section, pronounces the doom of the white metal in any direct fashion.  Not at all.  The deadly work is accomplished not by a declaration of purpose or principle, but by an ommission, in a catalogue of coins, to name the standard silver dollar of the fathers !  Here is the cunning shape in which the villainy hides itself—this is the language that did the work we are all lamenting to-day :

“ ‘ That the gold coins of the United States shall be a one dollar piece, which, at the weight of twenty-five and eight-tenth grains shall be the unit of value.

“ ‘ That the silver coins of the United States shall be a trade dollar, a half dollar or fifty-cent piece, a quarter dollar or twenty-five-cent piece, a dime or ten cent piece ;  and said coins shall be a legal tender at their, nominal value for any amount not exceeding five dollars in any one payment.

“ ‘ That no coins, either of gold or silver, or minor coinage shall hereafter be issued from the mint, other than those of the denominations, standards and weights herein set forth.’ (17 statutes, 424).

“ Imagine all honest member of Congress trying, in the midst of the uproar of legislation, to keep track of what that bill meant.  He could only do so by comparing it word for word with the existing statute ;  thereby he might have discovered that the standard dollar was omitted front the list of silver coins.

PRESIDENT GRANT’S TESTIMONY.

“ Even the President of the United States, the magnanimous hero of the civil war, Ulysses S. Grant, who signed the demonetization act of 1873—and without whose signature it could not have become a law—did not know that it had demonetized silver ;  and eight months after he had signed the fatal act, on October 6, 1873, he wrote a letter to Mr. Cowdrey, in which he shows that he thought the poor, disqualified, proscribed white metal was still ‘ a standard of value the world over.’  Here is his letter :

“ ‘ I wonder that silver is not already coming into the market to supply the deficiency in the circulating medium.  Experience has proved that it takes about $40,000,000 of fractional currency to make the small change necessary for the transaction of the business of the country.  Silver will gradually take the place of this currency, and, further, will become the standard of values, which will be hoarded in a small way.  I estimate that this will consume from $200,000,000 to $300,000,000 in time of this species of our circulating medium. * * I confess a desire to see a limited hoarding of money.  But I want to see a hoarding of something that is a standard of value the world over.  Silver is this.
    “ ‘ Our mines are now producing almost unlimited amounts of silver, and it is becoming a question, ‘ What shall we do with it ? ’  I here suggest a solution which will answer for some years to put it in circulation, keeping it there until it is fixed, and then we will find other markets.’  (See page 208, Congressional Record, December 14, 1877).

“ But our Republican newspapers,” said Mr. Hutchinson, “ have claimed that whole columns of the Congressional Record were devoted to the discussion of the bill.”

“ That is another trick,” replied the farmer ;  “ a bill to codify existing laws as to the mints had been up before two or three successive congresses, and had been discussed, but the discussion did not touch the question of the demonetization of silver.  Indeed, the bill of 1873 as it passed the house contained the standard silver dollar, but, as Senator Allison says, it was ‘ doctored ’ in the Senate, and the standard dollar was stricken out and the ‘trade dollar’ substituted, and this was declared legal tender only for debts of five dollars or less.  There is where the knife went in.”

THE TRADE DOLLAR.

“ What was the trade dollar ? ” inquired the young lady.

“ It was called the ‘ trick dollar,’ ” replied Mr. Sanders.  “ It contained 420 grains of silver, while the standard dollar contained only 412½ grains.  It was part of the work of the conspiracy.  It was coined on the pretense that it would be preferred by the people of China and India, in trade, because it contained more silver.  It was really made to fit into the niche of the demonetization of the standard dollar.  It was easier to slip in ‘trade’ for ‘standard’ in the act than to name no silver dollar of any kind.  That vacuum might attract attention.”

“ What became of the trade dollar ? ” inquired the young lady.  “ I do not remember seeing any of them.”

“ No ;  they soon disappeared,” replied Mr. Sanders.  “ Three years after they had been fraudulently used to displace our legal tender dollars, the subservient Congress passed an act, July, 1876, which provided that ‘ the trade dollar shall not hereafter be a legal tender.’  That finished their hash.”

“ How so ? ” said the young lady.

“ The bankers, Mr. Hutchinson’s brethren,” said Mr. Sanders with a smile, “ having deprived them of their legal tender character, and the object for which they had been coined having been accomplished, refused to take them for more than 90 cents on the dollar ;  and the price at once fell to that.  They showed great magnanimity ;  they might just as well have made it 40 cents on the dollar.  Every one who had a legal tender dollar had to take it to a bank and swap it for ninety cents, and take his pay in standard dollars.  Thus he exchanged 420 grains of silver for 412½ at a discount of 10 per cent.;  gave more for less and paid a bonus to effect the trade.”

“ Why,” said the young lady, “ I thought the value of money was fixed by the intrinsic value of the metals of which it was composed.”

“ All nonsense,” replied the farmer.  “ There is the demonstration of it.  The coin with 7½ grains more of silver in it would not circulate at all, because it was not legal tender, while the coin with the 7½ grains less silver, being legal tender, is worth 10 per cent. more than the coin of greater intrinsic value.  Intrinsic humbug ! ”

“ Ah, there is the mistake all your school of statesmen make,” said Mr. Hutchinson.  “ You rest all your faith on ‘fiat.’  But it is time to give up the discussion.  I see our young friend is yawning.  Let us resume the subject to-morrow.”

“ I am not at all tired,” replied the young lady.  “Indeed, I am intensely interested.  I have obtained many new ideas.  We women are going to vote some day, and we should inform ourselves on all governmental questions.”