_Question_. What are your opinions on the woman's suffrage
question?
_Answer_. I claim no right that I am not willing to give to my
wife and daughters, and to the wives and daughters of other men.
We shall never have a generation of great men until we have a
generation of great women. I do not regard ignorance as the
foundation of virtue, or uselessness as one of the requisites of
a lady. I am a believer in equal rights. Those who are amenable
to the laws should have a voice in making the laws. In every
department where woman has had an equal opportunity with man, she
has shown that she has equal capacity.
George Sand was a great writer, George Eliot one of the greatest,
Mrs. Browning a marvelous poet--and the lyric beauty of her "Mother
and Poet" is greater than anything her husband ever wrote--Harriet
Martineau a wonderful woman, and Ouida is probably the greatest
living novelist, man or woman. Give the women a chance.
[The Colonel's recent election as a life member of the Manhattan
Athletic Club, due strangely enough to a speech of his denouncing
certain forms of sport, was referred to, and this led him to express
his contempt for prize-fighting, and then he said on the subject of
horse-racing: ]
The only objection I have to horse racing is its cruelty. The whip
and spur should be banished from the track. As long as these are
used, the race track will breed a very low and heartless set of
men. I hate to see a brute whip and spur a noble animal. The good
people object to racing, because of the betting, but bad people,
like myself, object to the cruelty. Men are not forced to bet.
That is their own business, but the poor horse, straining every
nerve, does not ask for the lash and iron. Abolish torture on the
track and let the best horse win.
_Question_. What do you think of the Chilian insult to the United
States flag?
_Answer_. In the first place, I think that our Government was
wrong in taking the part of Balmaceda. In the next place, we made
a mistake in seizing the Itata. America should always side with
the right. We should care nothing for the pretender in power, and
Balmaceda was a cruel, tyrannical scoundrel. We should be with
the people everywhere. I do not blame Chili for feeling a little
revengeful. We ought to remember that Chili is weak, and nations,
like individuals, are sensitive in proportion that they are weak.
Let us trust Chili just as we would England. We are too strong to
be unjust.
_Question_. How do you stand on the money question?
_Answer_. I am with the Republican party on the question of money.
I am for the use of gold and silver both, but I want a dollar's
worth of silver in a silver dollar. I do not believe in light money,
or in cheap money, or in poor money. These are all contradictions
in terms. Congress cannot fix the value of money. The most it
can do is to fix its debt paying power. It is beyond the power of
any Congress to fix the purchasing value of what it may be pleased
to call money. Nobody knows, so far as I know, why people want
gold. I do not know why people want silver. I do not know how
gold came to be money; neither do I understand the universal desire,
but it exists, and we take things as we find them. Gold and silver
make up, you may say, the money of the world, and I believe in
using the two metals. I do not believe in depreciating any American
product; but as value cannot be absolutely fixed by law, so far as
the purchasing power is concerned, and as the values of gold and
silver vary, neither being stable any more than the value of wheat
or corn is stable, I believe that legislation should keep pace
within a reasonable distance at least, of the varying values, and
that the money should be kept as nearly equal as possible. Of
course, there is one trouble with money to-day, and that is the
use of the word "dollar." It has lost its meaning. So many
governments have adulterated their own coin, and as many have
changed weights, that the word "dollar" has not to-day an absolute,
definite, specific meaning. Like individuals, nations have been
dishonest. The only time the papal power had the right to coin
money--I believe it was under Pius IX., when Antonelli was his
minister--the coin of the papacy was so debased that even orthodox
Catholics refused to take it, and it had to be called in and minted
by the French Empire, before even the Italians recognized it as
money. My own opinion is, that either the dollar must be absolutely
defined--it must be the world over so many grains of pure gold, or
so many grains of pure silver--or we must have other denominations
for our money, as for instance, ounces, or parts of ounces, and
the time will come, in my judgment, when there will be a money of
the world, the same everywhere; because each coin will contain
upon its face the certificate of a government that it contains such
a weight--so many grains or so many ounces--of a certain metal.
I, for one, want the money of the United States to be as good as
that of any other country. I want its gold and silver exactly what
they purport to be; and I want the paper issued by the Government
to be the same as gold. I want its credit so perfectly established
that it will be taken in every part of the habitable globe. I am
with the Republican party on the question of money, also on the
question of protection, and all I hope is that the people of this
country will have sense enough to defend their own interests.
--_The Inter-Ocean_, Chicago, Illinois, October 27, 1891.