Those who in the Senate and in the other House of Congress, represent
mining constituencies are taunted with the selfish purpose of advancing
the interests of their own States at the expense of those of the
country. It is sought to discredit the State which I have the honor in
part to represent on this floor, on the ground that the people, being
largely silver miners, have a personal interest in the remonetization of
silver.
The silver miners, Mr. President, need no defense here or elsewhere.
They have asked no favors from the Government, and ask none now. They
are bold, adventurous, and self-reliant men, who have wandered across
alkaline deserts, and over pathless mountains, braved the assaults of
hostile savages, the miasma of the Isthmus and the storms of the Cape,
and have planted the flag of a high civilization on the western confines
of this Republic. No more patriotic or public-spirited class of citizens
can be found within the borders of the Union. Their business is an
honorable one. When they entered upon it they, in common with other
citizens, had the warrant of time, and the authority of all writers and
thinkers on political economy, for the belief that silver was, and would
ever be, a money metal, entitled to that full credit which from time
immemorial had been accorded to it. Silver, equally with gold, had been
consecrated by all the ages to the money use, and was dedicated to such
use by the Constitution of the United States.
When the Constitution declared that Congress should have power "to coin
money and regulate the value thereof" and that "no State shall * * *
make anything but gold and silver coin a tender in payment of debts," it
warranted the belief on the part of all who adopted the calling and
undertook the business of mining, that gold and silver would continue
to be money metals in the sense in which they had been for thousands of
years in the past. The silver miners were warranted in presuming that
when the Constitution esteemed so highly the legal-tender function in
the two metals, gold and silver, as that it prohibited the States from
making anything a legal tender except coin of those two metals, it would
not warrant the Congress of the United States in taking from one of
those metals the power of legal tender and conferring that imperial
function exclusively on the other. Silver mining is a business requiring
for its successful prosecution skill, experience, and energy, while
nine-tenths of the gold of the world has come from placers; requiring
neither organization, capital, nor skilled labor.
The production of gold is much more a matter of accident and much more
liable to fluctuation than is the case with silver. The silver miners
therefore had a right to believe that so long as 23.22 grains of pure
gold should be entitled to recognition as one dollar, 371.25 grains of
pure silver would continue to be entitled to like recognition as one
dollar, and would possess the legal-tender function as such, for the
liquidation of all debts, public and private. On the strength of this
warranty of the Constitution, and of the unbroken experience of the
ages, large sums of money were invested in mining property and in the
employment of labor to develop the mines of the country. On the strength
of this belief and conviction, shared in by all the people of the United
States, that gold and silver would both remain the money metals of the
world, debts to an enormous extent were incurred, and it was confidently
believed that both metals would for all time be available for the
payment of those debts.
The silver-miners had learned from the history of mining, as well as
from hard and bitter experience, that the mines might at any moment
cease to yield, in which case their occupation would be gone and the
capital invested would be a total loss. But they did not suppose that
the verdict of all time would be reversed, or that the implied warranty
of the Constitution of the United States would be disregarded. They did
not believe that either one of the money metals would ever be
demonetized. And if a doubt had entered their minds on that subject,
they would naturally suppose that gold rather than silver would be
demonetized, gold being too limited in quantity to answer alone the
purposes of money in a rapidly advancing civilization; its yield being
uncertain and capricious and the prospect of a continued and sufficient
supply becoming less from year to year.
But, Mr. President, the degree of special interest which the mining
States have in this measure is not to be compared with that of the other
States of the Union.
According to the report of the Director of the Mint, the total quantity
of silver produced in the United States in the eleven years from 1878 to
1888 inclusive was 406,210,000 fine ounces. According to the same
authority the commercial value of that silver was $436,260,000, and the
coinage value $525,145,000. A very simple process of arithmetic shows
that the difference between the commercial and the coinage value of that
silver was $88,885,000, or an average of $8,080,544 each year. Assuming
that amount to have been the annual difference between the coinage and
commercial value of silver for the five years preceding 1878, we must
add to the $88,885,000 the sum of $40,402,220, making a total of
$129,287,220 as the amount which the silver miners, not of Nevada but of
the whole United States in the seventeen years ending 1889, lost by the
demonetization of silver.
Having thus demonstrated in dollars and cents the degree of selfishness
which, as is charged, is the motive of the miners in advocating the
remonetization of silver, let us glance at the degree of selfishness
which may be said to impel other classes of the community to advocate
the same cause.