| Show T BLACKBURN TO CARLISLE The Senators Ringing Reply to the Secretary Secre-tary of the Treasury PLUTOCRACY VS r N DEMOCRACY How Carlisle Changed His Currency l rency Views WHAT IS BEFORE US Silver Was Stricken Down Not By the Dcmaml of tins People But nt the Behest of the Moneyou Classes Silver Was Altvaj the Poor Mans Money tile Money of I the People Silver Dollar Xot a Dishonest Dollar The Crime of I ISry nnd How it Was Surrepti Opuily Accomplished En 1 a mlA ml-A svble to Conquer the Americans I Over a Century ASO With Bullcth zniI Ba > oiieti Xotv Endeavoring to Accomplisli the Same Ends lly the Ise of Gold Tlie Coils Slowly But Firmly Fastening About the Country VeSStcr Blackburns reply to the speech of Secretary Cwlisle which was delivered sat Owentoa Ky a few days ago has been widely read and I variously commented upon A brief synopsis only having come by wire The Herald this morning presents I pre-sents the salient points with the assurance assur-ance that Democrats Republicans I an1 Populists will find it decidedly interesting in-teresting It was a great effort both from an oratorical and arumentative stand print He said in opening That the c itest now before the country was V nply a matter of the plutocrat upon one side and the Democrat upon the ether one backed by the money power i of this country as well as the money Pjwcr of foreign countries and the other oth-er backed by nothing but the intelli g < nee the patriotism the love of country coun-try and the manly courage of the African people It is a matter too that reached closet to the vitals of a free government the war of the revolution presented no issup so far reaching so important as the one we are now handling The liberties of the American people are at staj r V What it Means Translated into plain English it means if the silver cause is defeated absolute surrender to the British power pow-er a power that failed to hold Americans Ameri-cans in subjection by the sword but nhioh is now using that more subtle enemy gold It is simply a matter of choosing between Thomas Jefferson and John Sherman Turning his attention more particu larly to Secretary Carlisle Mr Black burn calls attention to the previous and present attitude of the gentleman upon the silver question showing beyond be-yond all possibility of doubt that until a very short time ago until he became a member of Mr Clevelands cabinet cab-inet the white metal had no truer friend than he that he otejr for the Bland bill thaA if he was not a free silver man W7 at least used free silver argu Jfcpnts that he voted against the pass pas-s jrf of the Sherman law which repealed re-pealed the coinage of silver that the value of the opinions of the secretary of the treasury today should be tested test-ed hy his actions of the past The speaker then goes on to say that while the secretary of the treasury treas-ury had a perfect right to change his views is at full liberty to say that ho was mistaken during all the time from 1877 to 1890 that he had preached preach-ed false doctrine without knowing that it was loaded he has no right to stand up before an audience and misrepresent mis-represent facts He says that bi jr tallisvn is impossible knows that is not true He knows that as you Increase the price of a metal you increase the demand for that metal If there is more demand for silver and less demand for gold the price of silver goes up while the price of gold g0E JW1 i It is Not True Mr Carlisle says bimetallism never was maintained by any people It is not true The history of the world shows that from 1803 to 1876 France did maintain main-tain successfully bimetallism in its truest and broadest sense In that French realm silver and gold for seventy odd years floated on even terms of value History of our own country refutes his statement The hlstOl y of this people shows that from 1792 down to 1S73 when the Republican Republi-can Congress by more than a two thirds Republican majority in both houses at the dead hour of midnight without warning to the American people without notice of this contemplated con-templated assassination killed silver I I For eightyone years the two metals in this land of ours with mints open I I to both alike or even terms had floated both as the final redemption I I money of the American people Who struck silver down A Republican I I Congress Republican by twothirds majority in both branches How was it stricken down Not openly and in the bright light of day but at the itChing hour of midnight an hour fitted for so dastardly a deedat that hour on the 12th day of February I I 1S73 this act which was denominated I is the greatest crime of this or any oVfier age ky the present secretary of th treaSUry or whoever it was that de that speech in the Federal Con TSf SS was consummated The utterer of that speech said the passage of that bill was the greatest crime of I that or any other age and that it was hfe culmination of a conspiracy formed I form-ed in this country and in Europe to bring upon the human family more I suffering more torttjre and poverty I than all the wars and pestilences and famines that the world had ever I Known Why was silver stricken down by I these people Had it ever been demanded j de-manded No sir I defy the man who I i Jives to put his finger upon a single I I political platform state or national I I of any party Republican Democratic Populist Womans Suffrage Prohibi I k tion Farners Alliance or any othjr i platform that ever demanded the ae nonetization of the silver metal t > dy had ever asked for it I ts rIte Peoples Money 1 was not stricken down because c it was not a good money metal It was more popular with the people than goldit has always been the money of the peoplethe people were satisfied with it They sent it forth in the times of carnage and it arrived and fed and clothed the soldiers of the I army I Gold never was the money of the people I The secretary of the treasury tells you in his speeches today that are ringing throughout the length and breadth of this land that from 1792 I when Jefferson established your American Amer-ican system of money down to 1873 I when it was overturned there never had been but eight million silver dollars dol-lars coined That is technically true substantially substan-tially it is false It was not so intended in-tended but it is a misleading and unfair un-fair statement Would it not have been a fairer statement if instead of telling the people that eight millions of silver had been furnished to you from 1792 to 1873 if he had told you that 205000000 of silver had been put afloat in this country coun-try and made legal tender by the law of the land But that is not all I wih it were lIe tells you that you must adhere to a single gold standard because it is absolutely indispensable and necessary to conduct our business with the foreign nations of the world I answer and say that the heaviest transactions we ever had with the foreign powers of the earth were from 186G to 1879 There never was a period in American history when your foreign trade and your foreign transactions were heavier in volume and yet during those thirteen years while Europe was standing upon gold and silver the United States never had either You had by law declared a suspension of specie payments and for thirteen years we did manage to carry on our heavy foreign transactions without either gold or silver We settled our balances in trade as they were always settled An Honest Dollar But the advocate of the gold standard stand-ard tells you that the silver dollar is not an honest dollar He says it is depreciated in value I deny it Measured by what standard f I af flrm and upon the affirmation 1 defy contradiction that one hundred cents in silver today will buy as much of human property or human labor as it ever did buy since it pleased the Almighty to create mankind One hundred cents of silver today will buy as much in farm products o > of the machine shop or of any product of mans sweat and labor as it ever did buy in all the ages It wai not buy as much gold I grant you And why Because you have declared that silver shall no longer be a money I metal on an equality with gold you have forced gold up and silver down by arbitrary unwarranted and unrighteous un-righteous legislation A fair way to put the proposition would be that silver sil-ver has not shrunk in value but gold has risen in value and the only explanation of it is that it is the result re-sult of arbitrary unjust and erroneous errone-ous legislation But he says that if you remonetize silver that is if you open the mints of the country to silver again every dollar of gold in this country will sprout wings during the night and take its fligth with the rise of the sun next morning across the Atlantic ocean that you would never see the gold again that all the silver of foreign for-eign nations will be dumped upon our soil for mintage and coinage We have heard this threat before It is the same old cry of wolf that fails to startle or affright us In 1878 when we passed the BlandAllison bill that gare free coinage limited to from two to four million a month it was not Carlisle but John Sherman who told us then what Carlisle tells us now He told us not to pass that bill that if we did every ounce of foreign silver sil-ver would be brought to our mints to be coined and stamped with the American eagle and that every dollar of our gold would take its flight at once We did not believe it I did I not believe Mr Shermans prediction then I do not believe Mr Carlisles prediction now For he is telling us the same tale that the Ohio Senator then indulged in Merely Moonshine In spite of Mr Shermans warning the Democratic party in that Democratic Demo-cratic House in 1878 with the aid of the votes of Mr Carlisle and myself passed that free coinage bill A Republican Re-publican President vetoed it The gold party was against us then The gold party is against us now It is not exactly an accurate statement for me to say that a Republican President I Presi-dent vetoed that bill but a counterfeit counter-feit pinchback representative of a Republican Re-publican President did veto that bill Hayes vetoed the bill That Democratic I Demo-cratic Congress passed it over his veto by a twothirds vote and I rammed it down his throat and made it the law of this land in spite of his I veto What happened Here stood Shermans prediction that all the sTS ver of the world was coming here and all the gold we had was going away i i Neither happened That law was in 1 I force from 1878 to 1890 We lied under un-der that BlandAlison free silver coinage bill for twelve years Not a Dishonest Dollar But they insist that the silver dollar is a dsronest dollar I do not believe it but if I did I would say retire it from circulation Honest men do not advocate the circulation of dishonest money They say the silver dollar is I only worth fifty cents where it professes profess-es to be worth one hundred Then for heavens sake retire it That is halfway half-way counterfeiting What is a counterfeiter coun-terfeiter A man who pushes upon the public that which purports to be worth a hundred cents when in fact it is worth nothing How much better than a counterfeiter is the man who proposes to continue to force upon the honest people that which purports to be worth one hundred cents when it is only worth fifty cents Is ni > L he half as bad as the counterfeiter The law sends a counterfeiter to the penitentiary peniten-tiary when it gets its dutches on him What ought to be done with him who advocates and puts out a dollar worth only a half dollar If there is a halfway half-way place between this temple of justice jus-tice and the penitentiary he should be sent to that A counterfeiter is a felon but the halfway counterfeiter is a financier Applause If I believed the silver dollar was a cJohonest dollar would not be willing to leave one of them in circulation when that sun goes down today Not as long as I claim to be an honest man But I dont believe it What do you mean by an honest dollar I believe be-lieve that an honest dollar is that coin which represents one hundred cents worth of your labor or the product pro-duct of1 your laboranything that in the open markets of the world will buy one hundred rents worth of an honest mans sweat or the product of an honest j hon-est mans toil I think that is an honest hon-est dollar which will pay one hundred cents of an honest debt and I do not think that all money is dishonest except that which represents the clamoring claim asserted by the gold holder J do not mean that no dollar is honest except that which a hoarder and handler qf money claims I hold that any dollar is an honest dollar which will command one hundred cents worth of honest toil in the open markets of the world Applause Carlisle Again Corrected Blackburn then takes up and completely com-pletely demolishes the statement of Carlisle that free coinage of silver would drive 625000000 in gold out of the country that he cannot account for 3000000000 to say nothing of twice that sum great would be the calamity he says should that money go abroad But suppose it did go out of the country He says money would be cheaper I thought the scarcer money was the dearer it was I thought it was more difficult to get hold of a dollar if there was but one dollar than if there were two in the world I thought the less money you had and the higher rate of interest the better it was for the money lender I thought the more plentiful money was and the lower the rate of interest inter-est the better it was for the producer and the American masses That is the rule of common sense and it is the rule upon which we have ever acted But the secretary tells us that he has made this discovery that if you expel 623000000 of money from your midst what is left because of its depreciated character will be cheaper I cheap-er and all prices will advance but the wages of the laborer will go down I This is a new discovery in political economy Who ever heard of the price of labor shrinking when prices were booming and advancing Are you to be hoodwinked with sophistry like I thisBut he tells us more He does not deny that since the passage of that act of 1873 the general tendency of prices has been downward He does not deny that all values have shrunken shrunk-en since that law was passed which demonetized the silver metal from 40 to CO per cent Your farm products have gone down Your farm lands have gone down The products of the I 0 4 E till V dC Ijf i 4 c 1i I I 11111 < I t I H J j 2 L I q JCDSOX IIAR3IOX Tlie New Attorney General men in the workshops have gone down The product of the laborer in all lines has gone down Everything has shrunk in value except gold taxes and debts Your taxes have not shrunk your debts have not dwindled I I wish to God they had gone down in proportion to your property and your i toil But the thousand dollar note I i that you owed to your neighbor stood intact It never shrunk a penny of I value while your farm and its products pro-ducts went down onehalf in value in I the markets of the country Taxes debts and gold are the only things that have not shrunken by the striking strik-ing down of one half of the money metal of this country Another 3Iisstatcment But the secretary has made another discovery in political economy He says the prices of all commodities are not measured by the amount of final redemption re-demption money No no He denies I that values in this country are determined I deter-mined by the 625000000 of gold which Is alone the redemption money of the people He says in round numbers that there are about two thousand millions of dollars in circulation of all descriptiongold silver greenback paper treasury notes gold certificates and silver certificates nickle and copper cop-per that this two thousand million dollars is the standard by which the values of this country are measured I say that is not true or if it is true these advocates of sound currency are today upon an absolute fiat money basis rnenever you put up a standard stand-ard of measurement by which to determine de-termine values if it consists of anything any-thing except the final money in which all debts are to be redeemed it is a fraudulent system with nothing on earth behind it to make it good What sort of a position is a party that claims to be par excellence the advocate of a sound financial system and then tells you it is measuring all values on a fiat money basis If there is but 625000 000 of redemption money in the country coun-try if there is but one million of final redemption money aye if there is but one Gods blessed dollar in all this land of ours of final redemption money then that single dollar constitutes the standard by which all values in this land are measured You cannot getaway get-away from it Results of Demonetization Think of it my countrymen what I was the effect produced upon you and me when that silver metal was stricken down Onehalf of the value I of your property In round numbers was destroyed Nor was that all The architects of this great financial crime did more They not only destroyed I one half the value of your property but they destroyed absolutely onehalf of your ability to pay your debts and i onehalf of your ability to earn alive Ithood for yourself and family Think I j of what has been done Europe used Ito I-to pay us two dollars where she now I pays us one for our corn our wheat jour j-our beef our pork our tobacco and jour I j-our cotton She paid us two dollars in I those years where she now pays us i but one But we still continue to pay Ito I-to this blessed hour every year as it rolls by to Europe two hundred millions I mil-lions of gold as interest on the debt I we owe them No abatement of payments I pay-ments of money to Europe but Europe pays us only one dollar for our surplus I products where befpre she paid us two There is the difference between the condition you were in and the condition you are in Do you want to get back to the position you held before Then get Europe to abate onehalf of the interest we pay her or else get Europe to double the payment she makes to usThe output of gold throughout the world for the year 1894 was less than 200000000 One hundred and eighty million dollars is the whole product I of gold of the world for last year and that is less than the number of gold dollars that we send to Europe every year to pay the interest on the debt we owe her England owes nobody today She owes her debt to her own people The balance of the world owes England ten thousand million dollars England says pay me in gold in the dearest money and she would send up the premium not to 100 per cent but ito i-to 1000 per cent grind labor into the dust bring poverty upon the masses and starvation and misery so that you j give me the pound of flesh that is my due the pound nearest the heart j Give me my money says Shylock and give it to me in gold The I United States owes the balance of the world at the lowest estimate eight I thousand million dollars We owe Europe I Eu-rope enough to require us to send each year two hundred millions of gold to pay the interest upon the debt That I is more gold than the whole world produces each year In heavens name I tell me my countrymen what chance j have we ever to pay the principal of that debt We must pay it in gold and the worlds product does not furnish I fur-nish enough to pay even the interest I upon i The Situation I Here is the situation You can never pay those debts that you owe I abroad that are counted by the billions lions until you bring about a steady permanent advance of prices all I along the line No spasmodic jumping jump-ing up of a single article like wheaton wheat-on change in Chicago the other day I when the crop reports furnished by the department of agriculture gave notice to the world that there was a I shortage and there would probably be but half a crop of wheat grown in our country when Armour ana CounSeiman were able to make a corner on wheat and send it up 5 cents a bushel in less than five minutes min-utes This is gambling No spasmodic spas-modic improvement of a single article here and there will ever enable us to pay the billions of dollars of debt we owe abroad There must be a general a permanent perma-nent advance of prices all along the line You must put the products of labor of the farm and workshop back upon the basis where the farmer is not compelled as he is today to sell I the products of his farm in the open I markets of the world at prices less than the cost of production This is our only chance for the payment of this debt I submit it to you not as financiers not as specialists but as men of good hard common sense and tell me my countrymen if the world itself does not produce enough j gold each year to pay the interest on your debt if yon had it all and you are not even the first goldproducing nation of the earthbut if we had all the gold and that is not enough to pay the interest on the debt abroad how in Gods name can we ever pay the principal of the debt if that is to be paid in gold alone You can not do I it is impossible They tell us of the dire calamities that are to befall the American people peo-ple if we pass an unlimited free coinage coin-age law As I have already told you we have heard those threats before They never were fulfilled Everything happened under the act of 1878 that I Sherman never predicted would come I and not a blessed thing ever did happen 1 hap-pen that he told us was coming But i I they tell us that dire calamities are to befall us if we pass the law restoring I befal silver money to the system of this country I do not believe it But suppose for the sake of argument that it is true I answer and say to the secretary and to all the other advocates ad-vocates of gold who think with him more trouble has already come more suffering has already been imposed more poverty has already been endured en-dured as the result of the Sherman law of 1873 than even you claim can be brought upon the American people peo-ple by the passage of a silver bill An American System Xeeded But some of these gentlemen tell us Hold still keep to the financial system sys-tem you have tfntll Europe and especially es-pecially England shall grant you per misson to put silver back No no The issue is presented plain and fair Shall we my countrymen have a foreign system shall we have an English Eng-lish system or an American system a system of our own When this country had only four millions of people peo-ple in It ynu whipped Great Britain and established your own system What sort of sonsof honored sires disgrace dis-grace this continent today if seventy million of freemen dare not undertake to maintain a system of their own What would your forefathers have said if the proposition had been made to them when flushed with victory over the British armies the proposition proposi-tion was made to them to tamely holdout hold-out their wrists and have the shackles of financial servitude five ted anew My countrymen this is the tssue I cannot be gotten around You have to meet it in this campaign and the presidential contest next year The issue is in front of you you cannot flank I you cannot bridge over i you cannot tunnel under it you have to meet it Meet it like men and settle it like men Judge between these systems I sys-tems contrast the present condition of the American laborer with what it was at the end of eighty years of trial under the Jefferson system and tell me not as Democrats not as party men but as patriots tell me as American Amer-ican citizens which syzm was the best for the promotion or your interests inter-ests Was it the system founded by the Immortal leader of Democracy the builder of free government among the people was it the Democratic the Jeffersonian Jef-fersonian system of olden times or is tmes It the Senator Sherman system of modern times Was it the double standard of gold and silver as the timehonored metals of a free people or was it the single gold standard that has never found its way into circulation circula-tion among the masses Is it the money of war or the money of peace that stands as your steadfast friend Only the Rich in Debt But he has made one more discovery and with that I believe he finishes He tells us in his recent speeches that which will be glad tidings of great joy to the toiling millions of the country He says there is no distinct debtor class among our people but as far as the debtor class can be located or described de-scribed It is I not the masses of A7neri can people that are in debt but It Is the railroads the insurance companIes com-panies the banks the saving and trust companies that these are the principal debtors of this land Tle masses are the creditors and the railroads roads and the banks are the debtors Joyful tidings to the thousands of sons of toil Happy news to the farmer whose farm is plastered over by a mortgage held by the bank Glad indeed is he to know that he has been laboring under a delusion he I I does not owe the bank at all but the bank owes him he is the creditor and the bank and the railroad company are the debtors There is but one merciful mission left for the bearer of these tidings Let him make one more I i speech I plead in the name of the l toiling millions of my countrymen in I the name of mercy in the name of I heaven make one more speech and tell I i that farmer and the laborer how tel I proceed to collect that debt CAp I plause Then we shall all be happy Sending Up Gold What is it I find here today in times of profound peace This great minister of finance was for days sell ing bonds to get gold to carry on the expenses of tins government Every time you seil a bond for god you send the price of gold up higher and wmen len the breach between gold and silver I We find a message sent to Cogress SIver telling us to pass a bill authonzng I the secretary of the treasury to seil I any amount of bonds not exceeding I five hundred million payable interest inter-est and principal in gold and gold alone Inank heaven that Congress would not obey that order that Congress Con-gress by a vote in both branches refused to knuckle down and obey that command that Congress declared that it would not add to the already heavy burden that rested upon the bowed bent back of the taxpayer of this country that much more of an interestbearing goldbonded debt What is the spectacle presented here Mr Sherman for twentythree years has been trying to get converts to this financial policy of his He never found a witness until now For nearly a quarter of a century he has stood there upon the floor of the Senate trying to explain that the demonetization act of 1873 was openly honestly and fairly passed Over and over has he sworn to it over and often has he labored in the Senate in his speeches to prove it I never yet knew him to succeed in convincing anybody of its truth except himself But now after the lapse of twentytwo years he finds fnds a witness In his Covington speech the secretary of the treasury repeats the oftrepeated declarations of Senator Sen-ator John Sherman and asserts that the assassin act of 1873 was an open fair and manly piece of legislation Icongratulate Mr Sherman upon hav ing found a distinguished witness at last by whom to prove that the greatest great-est crime of ths or any other age had been fairly consummated by the conspirators He has found not only a witness but the ablest ally that he could have found with a search warrant upon this earth Upon this issue Mr Carlisle stands today where Mr Sherman stood twentytwo years ago Does Xot Despair My countrymen Indulge me long enough to say that I do not despair of the republic I am no pessimist I am no crQaker I do not go through this world and life with my head turned over my shoulder reading the epitaphs in the cemetery behind me I have an abiding faith In the future of my country and inseparably linked to that faith I cherish an abiding confidence In the perpetuity of my party I believe this republic is to survive I believe that free gov ernment is to endure among men and I believe that the Immortal and immutable principles of Democracy must ever constitute the foundation stone upon which civil liberty must rest |
