l implements, the opening of vast
regions of new and fertile fields in the West, the reduced cost
of transportation, the doubling of the miles of railroads, and the
quadrupling capacity of railroads and steamboats for transportation, and
the new-fangled forms of trusts and combinations which monopolize nearly
all the productions of the farms and workshops of our country, reducing
the price to the producer and in some cases increasing the cost to the
consumer. All these causes cooperate to reduce prices of farm products.
No one of them can be traced to an insufficient currency, now larger in
amount in proportion to population than ever before in our history.

But to these causes of a domestic character must be added others, over
which we have no control. The same wonderful development of industry
has been going on in other parts of the globe. In Russia, especially in
Southern Russia, vast regions have been opened to the commerce of the
world. Railroads have been built, mines have been opened, exhaustless
supplies of petroleum have been found, and all these are competitors
with us in supplying the wants of Europe for food, metals, heat, and
light. India, with its teeming millions of poorly paid laborers, is
competing with our farmers, and their products are transported to market
over thousands of miles of railroads constructed by English capital,
or by swift steamers through the Red Sea and the Suez Canal, reaching
directly the people of Europe whom we formerly supplied with food. No
wonder, then, that our agriculture is depressed by low prices, caused by
competition with new rivals and agencies.

Any one who can overlook these causes and attribute low prices to a want
of domestic currency, that has increased and is increasing continually,
must be blind to the great forces that in recent times throughout the
world are tending by improved methods and modern inventions to lessen
the prices of all commodities.

These fluctuations depend upon the law of supply and demand, involving
facts too numerous to state, but rarely depending on the volume of money
in circulation. An increase of currency can have no effect to advance
prices unless we cheapen and degrade it by making it less valuable; and
if that is the intention now, the direct and honest way is to put
fewer grains of gold or silver in our dollar. This was the old way, by
clipping the coin, adding base metal.

If we want a cheaper dollar we have the clear constitution