nited States can never be placed
"alongside" any barbarous nation, except by compelling our people to
compete with barbarous peoples--compelling them to sell the products of
American labor at prices regulated by the cost of labor and manner of
living in barbarous countries. As well might it be said that we are
alongside the barbarous people of India because we continue to produce
wheat and cotton.

The distinguishing feature of all barbarous nations is the squalor of
their working classes. The reward of their hard toil is barely enough
to maintain animal existence. A civilized people are placed alongside
a barbarous one when, in their means of livelihood, the foundation of
their civilization, they are made to compete with the barbarians. That
was the result accomplished for the farmers and planters of the United
States when silver was demonetized.

* * * * *

It is a remarkable circumstance, Mr. President, that throughout the
entire range of economic discussion in gold-standard circles, it seems
to be taken for granted that a change in the value of the money unit is
a matter of no significance, and imports no mischief to society, so long
as the change is in one direction. Who has ever heard from an Eastern
journal any complaint against a contraction of our money volume; any
admonition that in a shrinking volume of money lurk evils of the utmost
magnitude? On the other hand, we have been treated to lengthy homilies
on the evils of "inflation," whenever the slightest prospect presented
itself to a decrease in the value of money--not with the view of giving
the debtor an advantage over the lender of money, but of preventing the
unconscionable injustice of a further increasing value in the dollars
which the debtor contracted to pay. Loud and re-sounding protests have
been entered against the "dishonesty" of making payments in "depreciated
dollars." The debtors are characterized as dishonest for desiring to
keep money at a steady and unwavering value. If that object could be
secured, it would undoubtedly be to the interest of the debtor, and
could not possibly work any injustice to the creditor. It would simply
assure to both debtor and creditor the exact measure for which they
bargained. It would enable the debtor to pay his debt with exactly the
amount of sacrifice to which, on the making of the debt, he undertook to
submit, in order to pay it.

In all discussions of the subject the creditors attem