advocated the shorter period, but the House of Representatives,
believing that the new bonds would not sell at par unless running
for a longer period, insisted that the four per cent. bonds should
run for thirty years. Greenbackers, like Mrs. Emery, who now
complain that the bonds run so long and cannot be paid until due,
are the same people who insisted upon making the bonds run thirty
years. It required some ten years to complete these refunding
operations--of which the larger part was accomplished when I was
Secretary of the Treasury--and they resulted in a saving of one-
third of the interest on the debt. So far from it being in the
interest of the bondholders, it was to their detriment and only in
the interest of the people of the United States.

"The next 'conspiracy' complained of is the alleged demonetization
of silver. By the act revising the coinage in 1873, the silver
dollar, which had been suspended by Jefferson in 1805 and practically
demonetized in 1835 and suspended by minor coins in 1853, and which
was issued only in later years as a convenient form in which to
export silver bullion, and the whole amount of which, from the
beginning of the government to the passage of the act referred to,
was only eight million dollars, was, by the unanimous vote of both
Houses of Congress, without objection from anyone, dropped from
our coinage, and in its place, upon the petition of the legislature
of California, was substituted the trade dollar containing a few
more grains of silver. A few years afterwards, silver having fallen
rapidly in market prices, Congress restored the coinage of the
silver dollar, limiting the amount to not exceeding four million
nor less than two million a month, and under ths law in a period
of twelve years we issued over 400,000,000 silver dollars, fifty
times the amount that had been coined prior to 1873. And now under
existing law we are purchasing 54,000,000 ounces of silver a year;
so that what she calls the demonetization of silver has resulted
in its use in our country to an extent more than fiftyfold greater
than before its demonetization.

"In spite of this, in consequence of the increased supply of silver
and the cheapening processes of its production, it is going down
in the market and is only maintained at par with gold by the fiat
of the different governments coining it. Now the deluded people
belonging to the class of Mrs. Emery are seeking to cheapen the
purchasing