he gentle Puritan didn't have enough
of it left to supply the museums. The Indian had parted with his lands
and his furs, had redeemed all the outstanding wampum with his labor,
and when he went to market to get firewater, he was taught that he must
have gold and silver to get it. Then he wanted to ride in blood up to
his horse's bridles. Commerce had found a better tool than wampum had
become. The buccaneers and the pirates had brought in silver and that
defied the Connecticut man's machinery or the Dutchman's imitations. The
years pass by and commerce finds that silver, because of overproduction,
becomes uncertain and erratic in value, and with the same instinct it
chooses gold as a standard of value. A coin of unsteady value is like a
knife of uncertain sharpness. It is thrown aside for one that can do all
that is expected of it. Gold is such a tool. It is the standard of all
first-class nations. It is to-day, and it will remain, the standard of
this Republic.

The value of the gold dollar is not in the pictures on it. It is in the
grains of gold in it. Smash it and melt it, and it buys one hundred
cents' worth the world over. Deface a silver dollar and fifty cents of
its value goes off yonder among the silent stars. Free coinage means
that the silver miner may make fifty cents' worth of silver cancel a
dollar's worth of debts. This is a greenback doctrine in a silver
capsule. Bimetallism is a diplomatic term for international use.
Monometallism with silver as the metal is the dream of the Populist and
of the poor deluded Democratic grasshoppers who dance by the moonshine
until they get frost-bitten.

The free-silver heresy is about dead. It has cost this country, at
to-day's price for silver, $170,000,000. The few saddened priests of
this unhappy fetich who remain active find their disciples all rallying
round the standard of currency reform. The report of the Secretary of
the Treasury is a confession of national financial sins, and a
profession of faith in sound money doctrines. Every business man will
watch with keen interest the progress of a plan for the reform in our
currency. You all know that the straight road is the retirement of the
greenback and the Treasury note, and the withdrawal of the Government
from the banking business, and you will naturally distrust any makeshift
measures. The greenback is a war debt, and a debt that is now
troublesome. We are funding and refunding it in gold daily, and are
stil