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Bimetallism is the desired end, and the true friends of silver will be careful not to overrun the goal and bring in silver monometallism with its necessary attendants the loss of our gold to Europe and the relief of the pressure there for a larger currency.
Senator William V. Allen of Nebraska summed up the situation when he said: "If by putting a third ticket in the field you would defeat free coinage; defeat a withdrawal of the issue power of national banks; defeat Government ownership of railroads, telephones and telegraphs; defeat an income tax and foist gold monometallism and high taxation upon the people for a generation to come, which would you do?... When I shall go back to the splendid commonwealth that has so signally honored me beyond my merits, I want to be able to say to the people that all the great doctrines we have advocated for years, have been made possible by your action.
"Gold monometallism is a British policy, and its adoption has brought other nations into financial servitude to London.... We demand the free and unlimited coinage of both gold and silver at the present legal ratio of sixteen to one without waiting for the aid or consent of any other nation."
It has always been declared by the bimetallists that the successor of gold monometallism will be paper, and Germany is expected to go upon a paper rather than a silver basis. In exchange operations German paper is about 8 per cent discount, but exporting gold or buying or selling gold at a premium is by law forbidden. All are penal offenses.
It remains to be noted that, in 1897, Japan took the momentous step of adopting gold monometallism. The indemnity which she obtained from China after the war of 1894-1895 brought to her treasury a stock of gold sufficient to form a substantial specie reserve. Moreover, gold had appreciated so that its value in terms of silver had exactly doubled during the first thirty years of the Meiji era.
Bimetallism is the desired end, and the true friends of silver will be careful not to overrun the goal and bring in silver monometallism with its necessary attendants the loss of our gold to Europe and the relief of the pressure there for a larger currency.
The act was disapproved by President Hayes, but immediately passed over his veto, February 28, 1878. The advocates of gold monometallism believed that the issue of these dollars would speedily drive gold from the country.
On the third day of the convention the platform, devoted largely to the money question, was the subject of bitter debate. "We are unalterably opposed to monometallism, which has locked fast the prosperity of an industrial people in the paralysis of hard times," proclaimed the report of the committee on resolutions.
Some of the members of that body, especially M. Bunge, who had been himself Minister of Finance, and who remembered the evil effects of the inordinate inflation of the currency on foreign exchanges during the Turkish War, advocated strongly the directly opposite course a return to gold monometallism, for which M. Vishnegradski, M. Witte's immediate predecessor, had made considerable preparations.
Not a member gave his true reasons for the votes he cast; he gave what he wanted the world to think were his reasons. Finance was on the carpet in that hour, and bimetallism and monometallism, silver versus gold, were in everyone's mouth.
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