r to maintain
high interest rates while reducing prices, and that it was the tool
with which they were everywhere welding the shackles upon labor. "Coin"
harped upon a string to which, down to the time of the Spanish War,
most Americans were ever responsive--the conflict of interests between
England and the United States. "If it is claimed," he said, "we
must adopt for our money the metal England selects, and can have no
independent choice in the matter, let us make the test and find out
if it is true." He pointed to the nations of the earth where a silver
standard ruled: "The farmer in Mexico sells his bushel of wheat for one
dollar. The farmer in the United States sells his bushel of wheat for
fifty cents. The former is proven by the history of the world to be an
equitable price. The latter is writing its history, in letters of blood,
on the appalling cloud of debt that is sweeping with ruin and desolation
over the farmers of this country."

When many men of sound reputation believed the maintenance of a gold
standard impossible what wonder that millions of farmers shouted with
"Coin": "Give the people back their favored primary money! Give us two
arms with which to transact business! Silver the right arm and gold
the left arm! Silver the money of the people, and gold the money of the
rich. Stop this legalized robbery that is transferring the property
of the debtors to the possession of the creditors... Drive these
money-changers from our temples. Let them discover your aspect, their
masters--the people."

The relations of the Populist party to silver were at once the result of
conviction and expediency; cheap money had been one, frequently the
most prominent, of the demands of the farming class, not only from the
inception of the Greenback movement, as we have seen, but from the very
beginning of American history. Indeed, the pioneer everywhere has needed
capital and has believed that it could be obtained only through money.
The cheaper the money, the better it served his needs. The Western
farmer preferred, other things being equal, that the supply of currency
should be increased by direct issue of paper by the Government. Things,
however, were not equal. In the Mountain States were many interested in
silver as a commodity whose assistance could be counted on in a
campaign to increase the amount of the metal in circulation. There were,
moreover, many other voters who, while regarding Greenbackism as an
economic he