nd its way into the
Senate Chamber. It is the cry of the demagogue, without the slightest
foundation. All these classes can take care of themselves. They are the
men who make their profits out of the depreciation of money. They can
mark up the price of their property to meet changing standards. They can
protect themselves by gold contracts. In proportion to their wealth
they have less money on hand than any other class. They have already
protected themselves to a great extent by converting the great body of
the securities in which they deal into gold bonds, and they hold the
gold of the country, which you cannot change in value. They are not, as
a rule, the creditors of the country.

The great creditors are savings-banks, insurance companies, widows and
orphans, and provident farmers, and business men on a small scale. The
great operators are the great borrowers and owe more than is due them.
Their credit is their capital and they need not have even money enough
to pay their rent.

But how will this change affect the great mass of our fellow-citizens
who depend upon their daily labor? A dollar to them means so much food,
clothing, and rent. If you cheapen the dollar it will buy less of
these. You may say they will get more dollars for their labor, but all
experience shows that labor and land are the last to feel the change in
monetary standards, and the same resistance will be made to an advance
of wages on the silver standard as on the gold standard, and when the
advance is won it will be found that the purchasing power of the new
dollar is less than the old. No principle of political economy is better
established than that the producing classes are the first to suffer and
the last to gain by monetary changes.

I might apply this argument to the farmer, the merchant, the
professional man, and to all classes except the speculator or the
debtor who wishes to lessen the burden of his obligations; but it is not
necessary.

It is sometimes said that all this is a false alarm, that our demand
for silver will absorb all that will be offered and bring it to par with
gold at the old ratio. I have no faith in such a miracle. If they really
thought so, many would lose their interest in the question. What they
want is a cheaper dollar that would pay debts easier. Others do not
want either silver or gold, but want numbers, numerals, the fruit of
the printing-press, to be fixed every year by Congress as we do an
appropriation b