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HON. WILLIAM A. M'KEIGHAN.
March 4th, 1891--March 4th, 1895.
In the year 1880, Mr. McKeighan removed from
Pontiac, Illinois, to a farm near Red Cloud, Webster County,
Nebraska. Prior to this he had served during the war of the
rebellion in the 11th Regiment Illinois Cavalry and had taken an
active part in organizing the Farmers' Association. He was at that
time thirty-eight years of age, having been born in 1842 in the
State of New Jersey, from which he was removed in his sixth year
to Fulton County, Illinios (sic). His education was obtained in
the common schools of that comparatively new State, during short
intervals of change from the incessant toil of farm life.
Ready for any fate, he graduated from the
dug-out to the sod house, and within five years responded to the
title of judge, having been elected to that county office. In the
sixth year of his residence he was the Democratic candidate for
Congress against James Laird, but failed of an election.
The district contained twenty-five counties, in
which he made a canvass, famous for bold aggressive attacks,
sledge-hammer arguments and a prodigal display of plain
Anglo-Saxon language. His Alliance training and Democratic
doctrines stood him in good demand and so vigorously did he press
the work of political reform that in 1890 the People's party made
him their standard bearer the Democrats confirmed his nomination,
which gave him an election and a seat in the 52nd Congress.
Four years from the time the irrepressible and
eloquent Laird was elected, as usual, over him, McKeighan polled a
majority of 13,000 votes.
FIRST SPEECH.
The Free Coinage of Silver was the first
theme with which he came before the House of Representatives--a
long elementary discussion of currency values, economic demands,
financial monopolies and the behests of a swindled public.
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All through the production is evidenced
careful and painstaking research, with a power of comprehensive
analysis little anticipated from his meteoric exhibitions on the
stump. It was no mosaic of incongruities--no cottonwood piazza in
front of a marble palace. Before reading it, the student will need
the aids of the History of Coins and Currency, of Banks and
Banking, and the apocryphal formulas of antiquated financiers. In
its introduction he proudly introduced his constituents before the
foot-lights.
Mr. Speaker, I represent, and am
proud to represent and voice on this floor, because I most
heartily sympathize with them, the principles of a party that
favors a legal constitution of money which cuts loose from all
pretense of metallic definition, a constitution of it which
puts the regulation of its volume under intelligent scientific
control, leaving it no longer subject to the accidents and
uncertainties of gold and silver discoveries and the wild
variations of the mineral output, as well as the malignant and
selfish manipulations of crafty creditors and money-mongers,
who have hitherto controlled the monetary legislation of the
world, and, who, by present indications, will for generations
to come continue to control it in their interests in all
European countries.
MINORITY REPORT.
But, before entering upon any
affirmative exposition, a few words upon the minority report.
This wonderful document is redolent with the odor of the
counting-house. There is in it no flavor of the soil or the
harvest field. It has no suggestion in it as to the interest of
those who smite the rock, who delve in the mine, who forge,
fell the forest, break the ground, reap and gather into barns.
From its reading no one would infer that money had any
necessary relation to the vulgar products of toil, or that
cotton, grain, or meat should have any voice in its legal
constitution. Observe with what delicacy the claim of these
security holders is put. They are based upon their expectations
and the "faith" that these expectations would be met in the
"best money." That faith is a sweet-scented bloom, till you
materialize it.
On close inspection it is found to have been
begotten by avarice, nurtured in hypocrisy and falsehood and
its fruition is the spoliation of industry. It is not true, and
these gentlemen know it is not true, that their "expectations"
is
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the measure of the duty of government in relation to
its outstanding obligations. It is not true, and they know it
is not true, that honor and good conscience demand their
payment in what they call "best money." They know, and everyone
who has ever given the subject any thought knows, that there
never was any government promise to pay dollars in this country
that was not equitably, honestly, and legally dischargeable in
whichever of the two standard coins was of the lesser value at
the time of payment. This "best money" outcry, and the claim of
"honesty" and governmental duty in that regard, is of recent
birth and is palpable hypocrisy. The government and everybody
always claimed and exercised the undisputed right to pay in the
cheaper coin. Whoever accounted himself cheated when his debtor
always, prior to 1873, compelled him to take in payment gold
coin of less value by 3 per cent than the "best money?"
Again, in conclusion, came his constituency,
bowing themselves gracefully from the stage.
And now, Mr. Speaker, I have but few
words to add to this already too long discussion, for I cannot
close without reference to the general situation. Our people
are very much in earnest in this money reform or restoration.
They are not dishonest, nor are they fools. They cannot be any
longer deceived by this "honesty" racket. What they have long
borne as a hardship they have now come to understand as a
gigantic wrong. Only by a study of this uprising among the
people who are the chief victims of this spoliation can be
gotten any adequate notion of the intensity of their
convictions, the high moral quality of their motives, and the
resoluteness of their purpose. They have been studying the
subject, and the breadth of their reading, the extent of their
economic intelligence, and the cogency of their reasoning puts
to shame the shallowness of so-called great "financiers" and
the prigs of the counting-house.
Mr. Speaker, the people I represent are not
anarchists, they are not opposed to the accumulation of wealth,
but they are opposed to its unjust distribution, they believe
that the accumulation of wealth is the first step in social
improvement, and that the next thing in importance is its
proper distribution among the several members of society. This
distribution, if left free to follow natural laws, would be
found to be in accordance with the skill, industry and economy
of those who toil.
The recent concentration of wealth in the
hands of a few
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is causing alarm in the minds of all thoughtful men.
That wealth in this country has become a great political power,
no fair-minded man will deny. Our people rely on their inherent
sovereignty as the true basis of just government, and they are
not willing that power and dominion should have any other
foundation. They believe that when wealth usurps the place of
man in government, it becomes man's oppressor. They believe
that man should be above every system, and that in man all
political power must center or calamity will follow.
The old idea that the favored few ought to
govern and the modern idea of a government of the people are
mutually antagonistic. There can be no compromise between these
two opposing forces. The people are organizing for a great
political contest, a contest the result of which will prove
that the integrity, honor, courage, and patriotism of our
people can be relied on in any emergency. This contest will not
end until corporations, combinations, and monopolies bow in
submission to just law. I will close by using language
different, though similar, to that used by my eloquent young
colleague. I say, "In that day" the people will be sovereign;
"long live the sovereign." [Loud applause.]
SECOND SPEECH.
Wednesday, April 6, 1892, the question being
to place wool on the free list, and time being limited to
five-minute discussions, Mr. McKeighan said:
Mr. Chairman--Owing to the fact that
my time is limited, it is not my purpose to enter into any
general discussion of the tariff question at this time.
I have never been able to bring myself to
believe that it is the business of the government to interfere
in the regulation and adjustment of the business of our people,
believing as I do that the men who are trained in the school of
actual experience know better how to conduct and regulate their
own business than the members of this or any other Congress
know how to regulate it for them.
Taxation is to levy and collect from the
people a sufficient amount of money to pay the necessary
expenses of our government. Of this kind of taxation. I do not
complain, but, sir, when the United States government lays its
heavy hand on my business for the purpose of building up the
business of some one else, or takes a single cent from my
family, for the use and benefit of another family, I feel that
the government is going beyond its business, and all laws hav-
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ing that end in view should be promptly repealed on
the grounds that we have equal rights.
The reasons given for supporting the bill
were, its passage would lead to a general reduction of duties,
because it offers to place wool on the free list, reduce duties
on the manufactured article,--and because it would reduce the
tax on mixed wool and cotton goods, so much worn by Nebraska
farmers.
I and the people I represent are in favor of
a system of national taxation that will compel the man who
possesses one million worth of property to pay more money for
the support of the government than it compels the man to pay
who only has $2,000 of property. [Loud applause.] Any
system of taxation that does not do this is not a just and
equitable system.
Time being extended five minutes more, it was
occupied by showing the fallacy of a reform that taxed the farmer
$1.50 and promised to return in benefits fifty cents,--that
assumed to run his business for him,--and offered him relief where
it would not interfere with some other constituent's prerogative
to plunder. In conclusion he said:
I thank God that the threats of a
sugar manufacturer will not deter any member of the Nebraska
delegation from standing in this House and saying that we are
willing to pay taxes to support this government, but we are not
willing to pay a single cent of tribute to a manufacturer of
sugar or to a manufacturer of twine. When the Democratic party
puts itself in harmony with the toiling masses then and not
till then will it be entitled to the support of the people of
the country. [Loud applause.]
When the people ask for the free coinage of
silver, the opposition to it predict the most direful calamity;
when the people ask for a proper regulation of interstate
commerce, the cry of calamity is loud and long; when we ask
that the hand of the tariff robber be taken from the pockets of
our people, the cry of these aristocrat "calamity howlers" goes
up like the howling of a pack of hungry wolves in a
graveyard.
The protectionists of this country do not
hesitate to contradict themselves or to distort the facts in
the economic history of the world in their attempts to prove
that it is a good thing to compel one class of our people to
pay tribute
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to another class, and that all the periods of
depression that we have experienced in the past were the
results of the refusal of the wicked "free traders" to allow
these pious protected patriots to put their hands into the
pockets of a long-suffering people.
Year by year this farce of protecting the
American laborer goes on; year after year the jaded steed of
protection is led into the Congressional circus ring, "the band
begins to play," and the gentlemen in masks ride him in full
view of an audience that would enjoy the show better if it cost
them less.
THIRD SPEECH--INGERSOLL ANECDOTE.
The Congressional Record of July 18, 1892,
introduced the Nebraska member to its readers in opposition to a
$5,000,000 appropriation for the Chicago Columbian Exposition. Mr.
McKeighan said:
Mr. Chairman, this discussion has
taken a wide range. I shall occupy a few minutes of the time of
the House. I was much diverted by the remarks of the gentleman
from Pennsylvania (Mr. Brosius), the interesting recital of the
sun kissing the hills (and things) was beautiful. Re related to
us the way in which Pericles caused the people of Athens to
submit to exorbitant taxation by a cunning appeal to their
pride. His remarks brought to my mind an incident of my war
experience. It was my fortune to be a member of the Eleventh
Illinois Cavalry during the late unpleasantness. It was told of
Col. Ingersoll that when on a certain occasion the chaplain was
found in the possession of a fine horse to which he had no good
title, in law or morals, the Colonel took him to task about it.
The chaplain said: "Why, colonel, Christ stole an ass on which
to ride into Jerusalem." "But," said the colonel, "You are not
Christ, that horse is not an ass, and we are not going to
Jerusalem; and I advise you to take the animal back and restore
him to his owner."
This house is not Pericles, we are not
representing the people of Athens, this appropriation is not
for a public building. The greatest glory of our Government
should be that every dollar taken from the people by taxation
should be applied to the legitimate expenses of the Government.
Since the constitutional question had been
ably argued he proceeded to show the inconsistency of men who
would not favor a government loan to farmers, with real estate
security,
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but at the same time would grant an Illinois corporation
$5,000,000 without security. Incidentally the Farmers' Alliance
was eulogized, government issue of greenbacks approved, and
refusal to grant free coinage denounced. The conclusion was
legitimate--"warp and woof" of the original fabric.
MR.
McKEIGHAN: We are asked to make this
appropriation to aid the World's Exposition, on the ground that
it will bring us into closer commercial relations with other
nations. This argument is advanced by gentlemen who are in
favor of tariff taxes that restrict trade.
When the farmer sells his farm produce he is
allowed to export it without paying a tax. But, sir, when he
exchanges it in the world's market for supplies for the use of
his family these advocates of "wider commercial relations" have
passed laws that compel him to pay a tariff so high that he can
not bring his goods into this country, thus forcing him to buy
in a market rendered artificially dear by reason of this
unjustifiable legislation. This is what they call "widening our
commercial relations"; I call it robbing the American farmers
for the sole benefit of American mill-owners.
Gentlemen, if you will take the shackles from
the strong arms of the American farmers you will not need to
vote $5,000,000 to teach us how to sell our produce or where to
buy our goods. The great wholesale and jobbing houses have in
their employ thousands of bright, educated, energetic, and
intelligent commercial travelers; they are on board of our
ocean steamers, bound for all parts of earth, seeking for the
finest fabrics of every country and choicest fruits of every
climate. They are on board of every train that crosses the
mountains and plains of our own fair and fertile land; they
crowd our hotels and display their samples in every country
store and in every mining camp.
Let Congress stop erecting costly monuments
to dead heroes, stop building costly naval vessels, stop all
such appropriations as the one proposed by this Senate
amendment, let the people keep the money they have earned; do
this and our merchants will find a revival of trade, the
commercial traveler will find plenty of customers, and the
farmers enough of money to pay their debts with.
Take the weight of class legislation from the
backs of American people, and they will take care of
themselves. Do this, and American skill, energy, and industry
will widen our commercial relations and build a strong
government on the sure foundation of equal rights to all.
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Gentlemen, the howl of "calamity
shrieker" has no argument in it. There were calamity shriekers
at the time of the flood; they were in Egypt before her
splendid civilization went down in chaos and darkness; they
were in Persia before the Greek army shattered their
magnificent forces on the plains of Marathon; they lifted up
their voices in the states of Rome, and gave their warnings in
her senate chambers; they warned Greece of her approaching
doom; they sounded their peculiar cry in Scotland when she was
a nation; they were not silent when Irish nationality was being
lost; they annoyed the court of England when her conduct was
driving to desperation the colonists whose valor taught the
mother country a lesson in that great struggle that deprived
England of an empire. The calamity shrieker has never failed to
give warning, and it will be wise to heed rather than treat
lightly the warning they are giving on our own country.
EXTRA SESSION FIFTY-THIRD CONGRESS.
What has already been written of Mr.
McKeighan's "First Speech" in the 52nd Congress on "The Free
Coinage of Silver" is equally applicable to his more elaborate and
severely logical discussion during the extra session of the 53rd
Congress.
To quote from the body of the argument proper,
would be as unsatisfactory as the exhibition of a sing]e brick
in order to convey an image of a giant structure.
A few paragraphs, however, may be relied upon to
indicate the temper and spirit in which it was conceived and
delivered.
MR.
McKEIGHAN: This is no time to scold or
criminate, no time to mete out to political parties the share
of blame belonging to each of them. Sir, in this discussion
Pilate and Herod have been made friends on this floor, and the
political Judas has shown no disposition to go out and hang
himself. But there is a to-morrow for political parties in this
country, a to-morrow that will bring condemnation and death to
any political party that turns a deaf ear to the just demands
of our people.
There is a God that rules over the destinies
of men and nations; a God that is not deaf to the earnest
appeal of His humble poor; a God who will see to it that the
desire of the people of this great nation shall "not fail," but
shall come to bloom and fruit not alone for those who dwell in
a brown-stone front, but, sir, for those whose dwelling place
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may be in the log cabins among the mountains or in the
sod-built homes of the Western settlers.
Refusal to repeal that act is complicity in
the guilt of the actions of that great wrong. The enforced
beggary of hundreds of thousands of brave hearts and strong
arms cries aloud for repeal.
That continuing wrong must be redressed. As
God lives, it shall be redressed. It is in the air; the stones
of the field are in league with us; time is the great champion
of our cause; the conscience and rapidly growing intelligence
of a stricken people is becoming enlisted; the resolute purpose
of the bravest and most enterprising portion of this proudest
nation on earth will not be balked by chicane and subterfuge
already planning to circumvent us by a new ratio, by which the
weight of our silver dollar shall be increased so as to make it
"honest" as gold is "honest."
I can not find the decorous words that will
adequately express my reprehension of the reckless immorality,
the wanton disregard of high and most sacred equities in this
proposal of increase of the weight of our standard coin, go
easily assented to by pliant and weak-kneed bimetallists. There
is no precedent in all history for such an iniquity.
I can not bring myself to believe that
honorable gentlemen in this august council chamber have duly
considered the ethics of the legislation they propose. Have not
our people suffered enough from this "best money" legislation?
When shall the end be of our concessions to creditor dictation?
I caution you, gentlemen, as I have before on this floor in
discussing this subject, against traveling further on that
dangerous road.
I am moved in this appeal to an earnestness
that comes from a higher source than the wishes and special
interests of my own constituents, dear as they are to me. You
are sowing the wind, and it will return to you in cyclones of
wrath. Do you not see what a precedent you are setting us by
using your power to increase the size of the instrument which
measures and defines the effective meaning of all commercial
contracts in the world, and that in the interest of creditors?
It will go hard if our people, when they come into power, do
not improve upon your instruction and legislate such attenuated
import into that great word dollar as will make those
heaven-kissing mountains of credit wealth shrivel and waste
away like an ice palace before a southern sun, and history with
a sigh of pity will record its verdict of approval. [Loud
applause.]
Taking part in the great tariff discussion,
in the first regular
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session of the 53rd Congress, January 19th, 1894, his speech
was a quiver of arrows, each shaft being barbed, and steeped in a
solution presaging monopoly pall-bearers at a tariff funeral.
FIRST IRONICAL SHOT.
Mr. Chairman--The one element of
sincerity in such pretenses is the belief, honestly
entertained, by a great many wealthy gentlemen, that it is the
business of the Government to take care of the rich, because
then the rich will take care of the poor. They sincerely
believe that they give bread to their workingmen; that they
support their laborers, instead of the laborers supporting
them. They regard themselves as the chief benefactors of the
race, and because they see in times like these multitudes of
men deprived or the comforts of life because unable to find
employment under a boss, they honestly believe that the boss
creates wealth and distributes it among his hired men. It never
occurs to them that the reason why such multitudes of men are
thus dependent upon them is that they, and those who act with
them, have monopolized all the natural opportunities given by
God to the American people, and have thus compelled the masses
of the people to come to them, hat in hand, saying, "Put me, I
pray thee, in one of the offices, that I may earn a morsel of
bread."
A COMPANION PIECE.
I am ashamed to have to explain to
anybody the transparent humbug of this Dodge philosophy, but it
must be done. It is not to the interest of any farmers or of
all farmers to raise small crops. There is no such thing as
overproduction. There are people enough in a few European
countries to eat all the wheat, corn, beef, and pork which we
can raise, and who would be glad to do so if we would give them
a chance. We want hungry customers. We do not want a few fat
monopolists. If the farmers all over the world were to take the
Dodge advice and to raise only half crops they would starve the
rest of the world and would kill off their only customers. If
by any such act of monstrous cruelty, they could get $2 a
bushel for a single year, they would only get 25 cents for corn
the next year; and meantime they would stop the production of
the very things which they want to get with their money. Money
is of no use to them unless they can get the comforts of life
with it; and if they starve people who make for the farmers the
things which they need, they would kill the goose which lays
the golden egg.
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FREE TRADE.
Europe could easily send us, every
year, at least $500,000,000 worth of the very things which
farmers want; and we should pay for these things principally in
wheat, corn and cotton, beef and pork.
Strike down the bars which keep out
$500,000,000 of European products, and you would, by the same
blow, strike down the bars which keep in $500,000,000 worth of
American farm products, which force back our own wheat and corn
upon us, choke up our markets and compel us to leave wheat to
rot on the ground, and corn to burn for fuel. A deep cut in the
tariff would enable our American farmers to sell all which they
now raise, at prices 50 per cent higher; and the total
abolition of the tariff would give to every farmer 100 per cent
more in exchange for his products than he now receives.
BOLD REMEDY.
It is said that if we admitted
$500,000,000 worth of foreign manufactures we should throw out
of work people who are making the same amount among ourselves.
Suppose this were true. Yet the farmers would be better off,
because they would get the $500,000,000 themselves in directly
increased purchases of their products, while the whole number
of people who would be thrown out of work, even if American
manufactures were reduced by this amount, would be less than
30,000. We farmers can afford to maintain those 30,000 men
without working and pay them as large wages as we earn upon our
farms and still make a good bargain off the transaction. As the
whole cost of this would be only $12,000,000, even if they were
out of work for a year, and the farmers would make a profit of
$500,000,000 by even half-way tariff reform, we could afford to
pay the people handsomely out of it.
TIN GOD.
We have the McKinley tariff in full
force. The goods are weighed by McKinley weighers. The duties
are calculated by McKinley clerks. The values of imported goods
are decided by McKinley appraisers, and the rates of duty are
determined by McKinley judges. The law was made by McKinley,
and the men who have interpreted the law and ruled upon its
meaning are all McKinleyites. No change has been made in
anything about the law or its administration by the Democrats.
Everything stands to-day just as Harrison and McKinley left it,
with every American industry
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protected and everybody in this country guaranteed
tremendous prosperity as the result of taxing each other. Yet
here we are. [Applause.]
"Oh, but," say our Republican friends, "all
the trouble comes from the fear which the Democrats have
caused. We have all gone to ruin because we are so desperately
afraid that you are going to ruin us, that we felt bound to
ruin ourselves in advance, without waiting for you to do
it."
A pretty kind of little tin god on wheels is
this great idol "Protection." It is still set up on its throne.
The laws and the administration of the laws are still in its
power, with all the Republicans falling down flat upon their
faces before it, while the surrounding priests beat the
Harrison gongs and the McKinley cymbals. And yet, in the midst
of all this magnificence, a few little boys peep around the
corner and shout "free trade," and instantly down falls the
great god Protection and smashes to pieces not only itself. but
its prostrate worshipers. And then its worshipers pick up the
pieces and say that nothing but ruin could have been expected
so long as little boys will persist in shouting "free trade,"
although free trade is not in sight, and everybody knows it is
not coming.
Now, what is the use of a deity who tumbles
off his throne and smashes his worshipers the moment that
anybody begins to talk? For my part, I would like, to see
things turned right around. Let us adopt free trade, and we
will let all the little boys in the world bawl "protection" at
the top of their voices, without the smallest fear that any bad
results would happen.
DAWN OF DAY.
We know for certain that the tariff
calls for revenue in proportion to the necessities of each
man's family, instead of in proportion to either his income or
his accumulated wealth. We want to put an end to that system
and to establish in taxation, as in everything else, the rule
of fairness, equality, and justice.
The light is dawning, though but dimly; and
feeble though the dawn may be, it gives hope and encouragement
for the coming of the day when our statesmen shall see the
truth that the different nations are only separate groups of
the one great brotherhood of man. Let us base the law on truth,
and the truth will make us free. [Applause.]
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COINAGE OF SILVER BULLION.
February 9, 1894, we find Mr. McKeighan for
the third time before the House, on the subject of silver as a
money metal, with a severe logical analysis, repeating nothing of
former utterances but following Mr. Bourke Cochran, the voluble
chief of Tammany, step by step, through the devious ways of a
prolonged discussion.
When the river is up and the banks are
overflowed, the spectator on the shore, powerless in the presence
of the majestic rush, is only able to capture an occasional
fragment, shrub or flower, as the waters in turmoil casts them in
view; so the compiler, in this case, can only exhibit a few
specimens of graphic word painting, piquant sentences, and pungent
epigrams.
POLITICAL COURTSHIP.
Blind and indifferent to the
behavior of our standard money in its domestic utilities, the
Administration became frantic lest poor Mr. de Rothschild would
have to pay a premium on our gold with which to carry out his
scheme of Austrian plunder.
Great party leaders, who only yesterday were
waking the echoes in the chambers of the Capitol with
denunciations of the crime of 1873, were fain to strike hands
with the contriver of that iniquity to re-Shermanize our
monetary system. Republican statesmanship, in the person of its
great financial leader, rushed into the arms of Democracy. Two
souls with but a single thought locked in loving embrace. And
where was the vehement Kentuckian and the towering Sycamore?
Forbidding the bans of that unnatural union? No! They were
gleefully washing their hands with invisible water, and
standing sponsors of the offspring. All this time, too, right
under our own eyes the Tammany chieftain was billing and cooing
with the whilom Czar, but now yielding to the tender
solicitations, without even a preliminary "I'll ne'er consent."
And all this political prostitution for what? Why, upon the
hypocritical pretense of carrying out the policy of metallic
parity, and to give the wage-earner the "best money in the
world." What drivel! One who had lost all his senses but his
sense of smell could penetrate that thin disguise. Why, during
the last four months of this agonizing parturition, and up to
the day this spawn of hell came to birth, wheat fell 12 cents a
bushel following the more precipitate fall of
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silver. Under the blight of that act dollars have
become so much "best" that thousands of workers can get none at
all, and those who find employment are being mercilessly cut
down in their wages at a rate never before experienced in our
history; and the deadly work still goes on.
HEARTLESS POLICY.
You have legislated against the
interest of those engaged in agriculture, even to the extent of
standing on the floor of this House and acknowledging that you
will depend for your gold supply, to keep up your single gold
standard system, by compelling that class to which I belong to
make sacrifices in order to enable you to get the gold. I state
to you people of the East, that I would force your commodities
into competition with the lowest possible labor of this earth,
as you propose to force ours. I would strike down, if I had it
in my power, every particle of tariff legislation and give you
people a dose of your own medicine.
VALUE OF A DOLLAR.
The gentleman claims that the silver
dollar by being cut down 45 cents under free coinage, the wages
of labor will be cut down so much on every dollar paid; that is
to say, that each one of these 55-cent dollars would buy and
pay for "100 cents worth of labor." Why, my impetuous and
bemuddled friend, please stop and think a moment and see how in
the same sentence in which you affirm a debasement in the
silver dollar, you show that none at all has taken place in the
case supposed, for it still buys 100 cents worth of labor. The
value of a dollar no matter how constituted can only be learned
by observing what it actually does in buying in the open
market, and here you are affirming it to be a 100-cent dollar
in payment for labor, the only thing you estimate it in, yet
insisting that it is only a 55-cent dollar; really you blow hot
and cold in the same breath. Your proposition has committed
felo de se. Of course such speech is not intended to be
analyzed carefully. But reducing the fallacy-hiding nebulosity
to definiteness, we say it is simply nonsense of the first
water to affirm that a silver dollar is "really -worth" only
fifty-five one-hundredths of a gold dollar in the labor market
and at the same instant is buying just as much as one hundred
cents. Surely the applause reported in the Record, as
following that rhetorical nonsense, must have been
derisive.
Had my literary friend spent more time upon
those
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REPRESENTATIVES.
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chapters in McLeod's Elements of Economics that treat
of value, and reveled less in the sentimentalities of Stella
and the drolleries of Gulliver. his discourse might have been
less ornate, but would have possessed more staple.
MODERN DRIVEL.
It is a singular kind of lust that
has taken possession of our financial advisers, viz., an
inordinate desire to sell our mortgages abroad and then
legislate an increase in the value of the money in which they
must be paid.
The implication that the closure of the
factory is due to a fear lest the proprietor would have to pay
his help in fewer and cheaper dollars is humorous. The
gentleman has learned his economics in the same school with the
President. They seem to think that cheap money and low prices
go together. Bray that foolishness to powder in a mortar with a
pestle times seventy times seven, yet will its minions knead it
into shape again for service in their campaign of
imposture.
When the matron of our home begins to be
anxious lest she lose the "confidence" of an alien suitor, and
gets ambitious for a meretricious "honor abroad," it bodes ill
for her self-respect and honor at home.
It is but the piteous whine of toadyism, this
prediction that we shall be "out of harmony" with England if we
adopt an American monetary system and use the product of our
own mines for our money instead of borrowing her gold. Rather
let us say England's finances will be out of harmony with ours,
if so be that free coinage here fails in forcing gold back to
its old normal relation to silver and products.
The beautiful conclusion might properly have
stood as the headline and caption of the speech:
Let that flag, whose glory has never
been dimmed on land or sea, never become the ensign of a people
bereft of vision and doomed to grind in the mills of the
Philistines, foreign or domestic; rather let its ample folds
float over a nation, the voice of whose humblest citizen is
heard in its legislative halls, and whose high mission it is to
lighten the burdens of the heavy laden, break the oppressor's
power, thwart the machinations of the. crafty, give to useful
labor its due reward and secure the blessings of industrial
freedom to us and to our children forever.
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EXIT.
As the fourth and final year of his service
was coming to an end, the familiar themes of currency again
challenged attention, upon a bill to retire the greenback
currency, and the silver treasury notes, and substitute interest
bearing bonds in their stead.
In the light of previous discussions he was
fortunate in a valedictory theme, in which justice was meted out
to the leeches of the treasury, and domestic and foreign
manipulators of banks and bonds, and which, was crowned with an
appropriate climax.
Mr. Chairman--Perhaps for the last
time on this floor, I again appeal to you of the majority, and
you of the minority, to consider the present condition of the
industrial interests of this country.
It has been the ambition of my life to live
and see the time when just and righteous laws would rule, and
when millions would be spent to enlighten the world where
millions are now spent for sword, bayonets, cannon, and
battleships to kill and destroy thousands of God's creatures in
order that a favored few may wear the mantle of wealth and ride
roughshod over the rights of the many. Let us build more
schools and fewer forts. Let us lead the world in that grand
policy inaugurated by Him who taught us that we are "our
brother's keeper." This policy will make us a prosperous and
happy people. It is the only true path to national greatness.
Shall we abandon this great highway of national honor, national
prosperity, and national greatness for the one pointed out to
us by those who seek to
"Reap where they have not sown
And gather where they have not strewn?"
© 2001 for the NEGenWeb Project by Pam
Rietsch, Ted & Carole Miller
