We are solemnly warned that the full remonetization of silver in the
United States would place us alongside India and the other barbarous
countries of the world. This brilliant piece of reasoning is advanced
with great confidence, and is intended to be conclusive of the argument
against silver. But, Mr. President, India is no more barbarous now than
it was in 1873--before our silver dollar was demonetized. India is no
more barbarous now than it was in 1857, when Germany demonetized gold
and placed herself "alongside" India. Neither is Germany any more
civilized now than then. We did not at that time hear any complaint,
either in the United States or Europe, that the use of silver as money
placed any one nation more than any other in dangerous affiliation with
the civilization of India. We have never heard it charged against France
that its civilization was brought any nearer that of India by the
immense quantity of silver money in France. Neither did we hear it
charged against the United States up to 1873 that we were "alongside,"
or dangerously close to the barbarous nations by our use of silver as
money.
Up to 1834 we had no metallic money other than silver in our
circulation, and up to 1850 we had much more silver in circulation than
gold. Were we "alongside" India then? Where were the wise and patriotic
men of our country at those periods? History fails to record any protest
on their part that we were placing ourselves "alongside" India or any
other of the barbarous nations of the world by our use of silver and our
recognition of its full money power. All the nations of the earth used
silver and accorded it full recognition as money equally with gold up to
1819. Was all Christendom at that time "alongside" India? When, in that
year, Great Britain sundered the silver link that from time immemorial
had kept her "alongside" India and the other barbarous nations and, for
selfish reasons of her own, arising from her position as a creditor of
all other nations, decided to recognize gold only as money, was any
evidence afforded of a sudden advance in the civilization of Great
Britain? Was the emergence of that nation from the benumbing
companionship of India and the other barbaric countries into the
glittering and refulgent light of the gold dispensation signalized, as
would be expected, by a corresponding improvement in the condition of
the people?
On the contrary, the history of the time informs us that as a
consequence of the passage of the bill by Parliament in 1819, compelling
payments in gold, prices rapidly fell, cotton in particular sinking in
the short space of three months to one-half its former level. Within six
months all prices had fallen one-half, and showed no signs of
improvement for the next three years. By reason of the contraction of
the currency the industry of the nation was congealed, as is a flowing
stream by the severity of an arctic winter. Alarm became universal;
confidence and activity ceased. Bankruptcies increased in 1819 more than
50 per cent. over the number of the previous year. Meetings were held
throughout England in which the people called on the government to
devise some means of redressing the situation. So universal was the
distress that the owners of land in England, who in 1819 numbered
160,000 were in seven years, by forced sales and foreclosure of
mortgages on the smaller farms, reduced to 30,000, and one in every
seven of the population lived on organized charity. All this was but a
part of the price which the people of England paid for a policy imposed
on them by the creditor classes among their own number. The condition of
industry and disorganization of labor led to frequent and serious
conflicts between the people and the military. They also led to
commercial crises without number, and England, by demonetizing silver
and thus ceasing to be "alongside" India, became the seat of panics, as
Egypt had long been of the plague and India of the cholera.
As a contrast to this I will merely cite the change in the condition of
India within the past seventeen years. When the Western world discarded
silver as money and, as a consequence, India received a larger supply of
it than ever before, that barbarous nation, as is universally admitted,
made progress by leaps and bounds. No country on earth has in the same
time made such advances in material prosperity and in all the elements
that conduce to the comfort and happiness of a people. Notwithstanding
the alleged debasement of silver, no sooner had its increased inflow
into India begun than the industries of a vast continent were
established and set in motion, and a substantial part of the activity
and prosperity that were wont to pervade some of the industries of the
United States has, by that demonetization, been transferred to fields
of wheat, and fields and factories of cotton 10,000 miles distant.
What really placed us alongside such barbarous countries as India was
the demonetization of silver. It was by that demonetization that the
people of Europe were enabled, with gold, to buy silver at 30 per cent.
discount, which, when shipped to India and coined into rupees, would buy
as much wheat as could ever have been bought with that coin. There has
been no decrease whatever in the purchasing power of the rupee in India.
This was equivalent to buying wheat at 30 per cent. below the price
theretofore paid for it, and thus the farmers of the United States were
by demonetization placed "alongside" the barbarous people of India.
Their wheat had to compete in the European markets with the wheat of
India, and it is this competition that placed them "alongside" India.
The farmer of this country, therefore, by demonetization of silver, was
compelled to compete with under-paid and half-starved ryots. And so it
was that our cotton planters, by the demonetization of silver, were
placed alongside the barbarous people of India. It is this degrading
competition that places a highly civilized people alongside a barbarous
one.
The advocates of the single gold standard deem even silver money much
better money than greenbacks. Does it then follow that when greenbacks
were our only money--good enough money to carry the nation through the
greatest war in all history--we were "alongside" or underneath the
barbarous nations of the world? It is not the form, or the material of a
nation's money that fixes its status relatively to other nations. That
is accomplished by the vitality, the energy, the intellectuality and
effective force of its people. The United States can never be placed
"alongside" any barbarous nation, except by compelling our people to
compete with barbarous peoples--compelling them to sell the products of
American labor at prices regulated by the cost of labor and manner of
living in barbarous countries. As well might it be said that we are
alongside the barbarous people of India because we continue to produce
wheat and cotton.
The distinguishing feature of all barbarous nations is the squalor of
their working classes. The reward of their hard toil is barely enough to
maintain animal existence. A civilized people are placed alongside a
barbarous one when, in their means of livelihood, the foundation of
their civilization, they are made to compete with the barbarians. That
was the result accomplished for the farmers and planters of the United
States when silver was demonetized.