cents more in coin than the market value of that silver, and 15 cents more per ounce than it is or can be bought for by the Government for coining purposes.

Mr. BLAND-Will the gentleman yield for a moment?

Mr. HEWITT, of New York-I cannot, for I have but a limited time.

Mr. BLAND-I am glad that I was more polite to the gentleman than he is to me.

Mr. HEWITT, of New York-I will yield all my time to the gentleman.

Mr. BRAND-I do not want it.

Mr. HEWITT, of New York-I will yield all my time.

Mr. BLAND-I yielded to the gentleman.

Mr. HEWITT, of New York-Yes; but the gentleman had an hour, while I have but fifteen minutes.

Mr. BLAND-I will not interrupt the gentleman.

Result of Free Coinage.

Mr. HEWITT, of New York-The controversy is one of fact. What would happen? Of course all the world who are now trying to sell silver for 101 cents per ounce will come to our mints, where they could sell it for 116 cents per ounce. It will be. "the devil take the hindmost" in the rush to sell silver for 15 cents per ounce more than its market value.

And under his proposition the Government must take the silver and pay that rate for it. I suppose the gentleman from Missouri would provide a bullion fund for this purpose. Has he ever considered the magnitude of the bullion fund which would have to be provided? There is supposed to be in existence in the world $6,000,000,000 of silver; and the holders of the whole of that $6,000,000,000 would rush to our mints under the gentleman's proposition. And if we were to buy it all and keep the mints open the bullion fund which we would have to provide would have to be on the scale of magnificence proportioned to so vast an operation. It would certainly provide an outlet at once for the idle and useless fund of $126,000,000 of silver dollars now stored at great expense in the Treasury.

But no such thing would happen; the limitation would be the coinage capacity of our mints. To the extent of the coinage capacity of our mints, which would probably not much, if any, exceed the silver production of this country, which is about $40,000,000 worth per annum, the Government would be giving 15 per cent. more than the market value of silver bullion in this or any other markets in the world.

What is the next step? Every man who had thus received 116 cents per ounce for that which is worth in the markets of the world only 101 cents per ounce would hasten to put it into some form of useful value. First of all he would prefer gold, for gold will buy everything else in every market in the world. The consequence would be that the rush for gold would immediately raise it to a premium, and the limit of that premium will be just the difference in the bullion value of silver and gold. In other words, the premium would be 15 per cent., because, as everybody knows, gold and silver are dealt in by the money-brokers all over the world on a margin of one-eighth of 1 per cent.

Then, when gold went up to a premium, the next rush would be to buy commodities with silver dollars on the old standard of values, and the price of commodities would all advance. They are bought and sold to-day at gold value, but the price would then advance with the premium on gold, and they would thereafter be sold at silver values. In other words, all the necessaries of life would be rapidly advanced until they would purchase as much gold as they did before the premium existed.

Wages of Labor.

Then the workingman who receives his wage of one or two dollars per day, as the case may be, and to whom the rise always comes last and sometimes never comes, would be compelled to buy his supplies at 15 per cent. advance. This measure, therefore, would operate as a deduction from the wages of labor of just 15 per cent.

In re

Then what next would happen? I shall be told that this proposition would enable the poor man to pay his debts at 15 per cent. deduction from what he had agreed to pay; that this is sound in principle and a most beneficent feature of the plan. sisting it I shall be told that I represent the capitalistic class and am the organ of Wall street. Now, the rich man knows how to take care of himself. The poor man does not know and can not know how to take care of himself, and we are sent here as far as possible to take care of him, and it is for that reason I strive to-day to expose the fallacy of a proposition which can only have the effect of making the rich richer and the poor

poorer.

I resist, then, this proposition of the gentleman from Missouri, because, in the first place, it would rob the poor man of 15 per cent. of his present wages, measured by its

purchasing power; and in the next place it would rob him of 15 per cent. of the hard earnings which he has saved against a rainy day. The rich men hold property which would rise in value with the premium on gold. They hold bonds of railroad companies, which by the letter of the contract are made payable in gold.

Savings of the People.

But all debts not payable in gold would be solvable in silver. Where are those debts, and to whom do they belong? The great lenders of this country are the savingsbanks, the mutual insurance companies, and the incorporated companies which hold in trust the savings of the poor and the earnings of labor. Their loans are made payable in lawful money, and will be paid off in the depreciated silver which will follow its free and unlimited coinage, for in the end the silver coins can have no greater value than the market price of the bullion from which they are eoined.

Therefore, when this depreciation of 15 per cent. takes place all the loans made by savings banks, trust companies, and mutual insurance companies, amounting to more than $100,000,000, representing the earnings of professional men who live upon salaries, the savings of clerks, the sole provision for widows and orphans would be payable in silver, to the loss in my city and in my district of millions of dollars laboriously saved by the most deserving classes of the community, and who, since the recent decision of the Supreme Court of the Legal-tender case, have no other protection than in the wisdom of Congress.

I represent a district in which there are but few capitalists. I represent 150,000 people who earn their daily bread by their daily labor. They are an industrious and saving constituency. Their money is in the savings banks of the city of New York. You will be astonished to know it, but in the State of New York over $500,000,000 of the savings of these people are to-day loaned out to be paid back in the money of the land. If that money be depreciated 15 per cent., then the people will lose 15 per cent. of all their accumulated earnings. And this depreciation is only the beginning of the downward course in the value of silver. The commercial world has outgrown the use of silver as a neeessary tool of commerce. Gold and paper instruments of exchange have taken its place. They are better and cheaper tools of trade. Silver is relegated to its proper place as a convenient subsidiary money, of which the intrinsic value is of no consequence so long as there is local redemption for it within the area where it circulates.

But gold pays international balances, and is and will remain the sole standard of value in the great markets of the world. Hence, Mr. Speaker, I oppose the whole proposition of the gentleman to open our mints to the free coinage of silver, for the reason that thereby the nation would lose at once 15 per cent. on all the silver which would flow into this country from foreign countries now earnestly seeking an opportunity to get rid of the heavy load of silver which weighs them down and embarrasses their finances. In the Bank of France alone there are $200,000,000 seeking a market. The German Government stopped the sale of its silver when it went below 55 pence to the ounce, and is waiting a chance to unload another one hundred millions on anybody that will buy it. But outside of these countries, whence I have heard it said on this floor silver could not come because "the people of this country were not such fools as to buy the worthless stuff," outside of these countries are India and China, the sinks of silver for more than two thousand years. In these countries gold is already at a premium of 15 per cent. as compared with silver; and men who could bring silver from India to this country and convert it into gold, as the gentleman from Missouri would allow them to do by his proposition of free coinage, would of course make all speed to gather up from all quarters the vast fund of silver in those countries and dump it down upon the people of this land, where the loss will fall upon the laboring classes, who, unless we interpose for their benefit, will be helpless to protect themselves.

Gentlemen who flatter themselves that the silver of the world will not seek the market where bullion fetches the highest price deliberately shut their eyes to the inexorable laws of trade. Silver circulates in France at the ratio of 15% to I of gold only because there is no coinage of silver by the Latin Union. This coinage was suspended simply to avoid the depreciation of silver coins to the bullion value which would otherwise have taken place. Give it a market at more than its bullion value, and it will be replaced with gold as surely as the air rushes into a vacuum.

The depreciation of our silver coins, Mr. Speaker, would occur at once if the mints were now opened to the free coinage of silver. What would occur at once in that event, is just as sure to occur, if you allow time enough, under the limited coinage act of $2,000,ooo a month. This depreciation will be the slow but sure work of the monster steadily digging away at the foundations of the wealth and prosperity of this country, so that in a little while we shall be brought to the silver basis; and then all the consequences I have

is

predicted will occur just as certainly as if the gentleman were able to carry out his plan of free coinage at once. In that proposition he is perfectly logical. If we are to go on with the coinage of silver at all, the unlimited coinage which the gentleman proposes the only defensible position, and ought to be put into effect, if it were not for the disastrous consequences which would send a flood of ruin over this land.

But as I have said those consequences are unavoidable, whether we continue the limited coinage or institute the free coinage of silver. Twice in my life have I witnessed the transfer in this country of vast masses of wealth from the possession of those who have created it, to the ownership of those who were shrewd or fortunate enough to profit by the situation. Once was when the legal-tender act was passed and creditors were forced to take 40 cents in payment of 100 cents which was their just due. Again, when the resumption of specie payment took place in 1879, persons who had borrowed 40 cents were forced to pay the debt with too cents. No tongue can describe the ruin and the misery caused by this wholesale transfer of property, the wrecks of which still survive in every State in this Union. It is because I hope to be spared the sad spectacle of another such unjust and uncalled for reversal of the laws which ought to govern the acquisition and transfer of property, that I oppose, and shall oppose, the degradation of the standard of value, whereby one class of the community, and the most deserving as it is the most helpless class, is pillaged by law for the benefit of those who live by the sweat and toil of their less fortunate and more confiding fellow-men. [Applause. ]

Appendix.

INDIA-FALLING OFF IN THE DEMAND FOR SILVER.

The India department of finance and commerce states the silver imports and exports of India, taking its trade with all countries for the last four years (the Indian fiscal year, like the British, ending March 31), as follows :

Table showing increase of circulation in the United States.

Table showing increase of silver in the United States Treasury.

Table showing proportions of world's production of gold and silver.

The Independent Tidal-Wave.

Its Significance.

Seldom in the history of American politics has there been such a popular uprising against the Presidential nominee of their own party as the Republican bolt against James G. Blaine.

Leading and influential newspapers, prominent business men, college professors, and the scholars in politics, distinguished statesmen, and thousands, tens and hundreds of thousands of thinking and intelligent voters view with sorrow, disgust, and alarm the dangerous and corrupt tendencies of their party, and have determined to rebuke it by voting for the Democratic nominee.

Among the causes of this independent tidal wave are the following:

Dissatisfaction with Mr. Blaine's bad public record.

Alarm at official corruption.

Alarm at the party's subserviency to monopolies.
Opposition to its rapid drift toward centralization.

Sorrow at its disregard of constitutional methods.

Irritation at its encroachments on personal liberty by the enactment of sumptuary legislation.

Nausea at its hypocrisy.

A portion of these independent voters have stated the grounds of their opposition, and we will therefore let them tell their own story.

Mr. Codman's Address.

At a conference of Republicans and Independents in New York on the 22d of July, Col. Charles R. Codman, of the Massachusetts Committee, was elected President of the conference, and delivered the following address :

FELLOW CITIZENS-You conter a great honor upon me in choosing me to preside in this Conference, not of office-holders, nor of office-seekers, but of citizens desiring only the honor and welfare of the Republic. We have not met here as party men, we are not sent here by party machinery; but we come representing large bodies of citizens, who have determined for the time being to set aside the claims of party, whatever those claims may be, and to act together independently to maintain ideas, and, if possible, achieve results which shall be for the highest good, as we see it, of the whole country. The bond that unites us is a jealous sensitiveness for the national character, and resentment at an attempt to lower it in the eyes of the world. It would be, we hold, an unspeakable disgrace-in full knowledge of the facts, and with our eyes wide open-to place in the Presidential chair as the representative statesman of the United States a man who has never cleared his reputation from imputations which, if true, show that public office was used by him for private gain. We have examined the evidence against Mr. Blaine, and believing that it shows at the very least that his standard of public morality is low; that he is a man willing to expect and to claim pecuniary advantages from those whose interests he has been enabled to advance in the exercise of his public office, and who does not stop at this, but has no hesitation in promising to use his official power and influence to further