642 CONGRESSIONAL RECORD- SENATE. JANUARY 14, 

Also, petitions of Jacob Warwick and of Joseph T. Mitchell, of Augusta County, Virginia,_praying that their claims be referred to the Court 

of Claims-to the Committee on War Claims. 

By l'tir. WADSWORTH: Papers relating to the claim of Sarah T. 

Duke-to the Committee on Invalid Pensions. 

By Mr. WILLIAM W A.RNER: Petitions of A. J. Walker, administra.tor of estate of Polly Walker; of J. H. Sanders, of Jaekson County, 

Missouri, asking reference of their claims to Court of Claims-to the 

Committee on War Claims. 

The following petitions, praying Congress to place the coinage of silver 

upon an equality with gold; that there be issued coin certificates of one, 

two, and five dollars, the same being made legal tender; that one and 

two dollar legal-tender notes be issued, and that the public debt be paid as rapidly as possible by applying for this purpose the idle surplus now in the Treasury, were presented and severally referred to the Committee on Coinage, Weights, and Measures: 

By Mr. BARRY: Of citizens ofYalobusha County, Mississippi. 

By l'tir. DLAND: Of citizens of Rolla, Mo., and of Douglas County, 

Missouri. 

By Mr. M~LLA.RD: Of Mortimer Spring and others and of A. S. 

Hungerford and others, of New York. 

SEN .ATE. 

THURSDAY, January 14, 1886. 

Prayer by the Chaplain, Rev. E. D. HUNTLEY, D. D. 

Mr. HA. WLEY re.Sumed the chair as presiding officer. 

The Journal of yesterday's proceedings was read and approved. 

PETmONS Al\T_D MEMORIALS. 

Mr. INGALLS presented the petition of Martha J. Coston, a resident 

of the District of Columbia, praying for the opening of Vermont ave- nu~, in the city of Washington; which was referred to the Committee on the District of Columbia. 

l't1r. ALLISON. I present the petition of Rudolph us Knorr, of Stapleton, Staten Island, N.Y., in which he states his service in the Navy 

Department qf the United States for thirty-seven years, and'prays that 

he be placed upon the retired-list of the Navy. I move that the petition be referred to the Committee on Naval .Affairs. 

The motion was agreed to. 

l'tlr. DAWES. I present the memorial of Maj. Edward Ingersoll, 

and a large number of other officials and employ&; in the Spr.ingfi.eld 

armory, in behalf of one William Tegethoff, in which they represent 

that William ',l.'egethoff has spent his life in the armory and has devoted 

himself with great diligence to the service of the United States there 

by the making of some quite rare inventions which have saved the 

United St-ates a very large sum of money; that in his devotion to this 

work he has lost his eye-sight and become blind and in needy circumstances. Having spent all his life in the service of the United States, 

all these officers and officials, together with the late Secretary of War, 

commend his case to the United States for relief. 

I desire to have the memorial referred to the Committee on l'tfilitary 

A.ffa.irs, and ask them to consider it early. The committee will find 

reference to precedents that will aid in this pexson's behalf in the me- morial itself. 

The PRESIDING OFFICER (1\Ir. HAWLEY in the chair). The 

memorial will be referred to the Committee on Military .A.ffairn. 

l'tir. PLATT. On the lOth of December I introduced a bill (S. 347) 

to relieve commercial travelers from license taxes. I desire now to present a petition of the officers of the National Travelers' Protective Association of the United States and also of the presidents of State divisions of that association in support of the bill. I move that it be re- ferred to the Committee'on Commerce. 

Mr. EDMUNDS. I wish to say in connection with that, for the 

consideration of the committee, that it is represented to me by the mer- chants and artisans doing business and labor in this city that the present condition of things as to commercial travelers, as they call themselves, is altogether too favorabl~ to the traveler and altogether too 

hard against the merchant and the artisan who has to pay his rent and 

taxes in this town, and who is exposed to any surplus stock from any 

other city being brought here and sold in a room where only a nominal rent for two or three days is paid, to the p;reat injury of the laboring people who work in the shops, &c., in fabricating articles that are consumed here. I wish to call that view of the subject to the attention of the Committee on Commerce. 

Mr. PLATT. I h::Lve no doubt the Committee on Commerce will be 

exceedingly glad to have these gentlemen appear before them. If there 

is anybody in the District of Columbia or anywhere else who believes 

that restriction creating inequalities between citizens of States should 

still be retained in the District-of Columbia I think they ought to have a hearing. 

Mr. Mo1\1ILLAN. As the Committee on Commerce has been referred 

to, I will only take occasion to say th::Lt we are always ready to hear 

both sides of every question, and we shall be glad to hear any persons 

interested in this question if they will communicate with the committee. They can send a communication to me or any other member of 

the committee. 

The PRESIDING OFFICER. The petition will be referred to the 

Committee on Commerce. · l'tir. VOORHEES presented a petition of the executive committee on Indian concerns of theW estern Yearly Meeting of Friends, held at Plainfield, Hendricks County, Indiana, praying for certain legislation con- cerning the educational interests of the East Band of Cherokees inN orth 

Carolina; which was referr~d to the Committee on Indian Affairs. 

1\Ir. BECK. I present the petition of Albert W. Bow and other citi- zens of Cumberland County, Kentuc1..-y, praying for the passage of the bill 

granting national aid to education throughout the United States, com- monly known as the Blair bill. As the bill has been reported, I move that the petition lie on the table. 

The motion was agreed to. 

Mr. BECK. I have been requested by the Delegate from Montana, as well as by the Board of Trade of Helena, Montana, to present resolu- tions adopted by that organization remonstrating against the stoppage 

of the coinage of the silver dollar, and for other purpo es. I move that 

the resolutions be referred to the Committee on Finance. 

The motion was agreed to. 

Mr. BECK. I also present a memorial, pr.incipally signed, I believe, 

by citizens of Kansas and Illinois, remonstrating against the suspension of the coinage of silver, and for other purposes. I move that the 

memorial be referred to the Committee on Finance. 

The motion was agreed to. 

1\Ir. BECK. I have had a number of petitions sent to me, I hardly 

know why, from other States, with a request that I present them, 

praying for the stoppage ofthe silver coinage. I did not present them, 

and have returned them respective1y to those who sent them, because 

I am satisfied they were dictated by a letter which I received, I do not 

know how, marked "confidential circular," and reading thus: 

BOARD OF TRADE AND TRANSPORTATION, 

· New York, December 24., 1885. lCon.fidentia.l circular.] 

DEAR Sm: Thanking you for your letter of recent date, the committee on silver coinage desire to know if you will co-operate with them in the way of di tributing documents, and otherwise, for the purpose of influencing public sentiment in favor of the early suspension of the Bland law? To that end it is earnestly requested- :First·. That you write a personal letter at once to the Hon. JoHN G. CARLISLE, 

Speaker of the House of Representatives, Washington, D. 0., urging him tore- frain from placing extreme silver 1ueu on the Coinage Committee, and so give ''fair field and no favor" to all interests. This is very important, and to be of any value must reach Washington before January 5; if too late for letter to reach, 

please telegraph. Second. That you write separate personal letters to your own Representative in Congress and your United States Senators expre sing your views to them in the same manner as you did in your letter to this committee; also asking them if they will fa.vor the suspension of the Bland law. 

Third. After writing the above letters, please inquire quietly among your friends and neighbors to ascertain their views upon the question, and induce as many as possible to write Mr. CA.RLISLE and your Member of Congress and Senators iu like manner. Fourth. Please make note of all persons who promise so to write and send list of their names to undersigned, who will from time to time i ue confidential information on the situation. The committee asks in return, occasionally, such information or suggestions as you can give. If you will co-operate in the manner indicated you will assist very materially in a work which promises succe . Per onalletters are suggested in preference to formal petitions, as experience has shown them to be most effective. Will you fa.vor us with a reply? 

Very truly, yours, THE COl\IJ\IITTEE ON SILVER COINAGE. 

• A. B . .MILLER, Chairman. 

Believing that the papers were sent to me in accoruance with that 

secret circular, I have respectively returned 'them to those sending 

them. 

Mr. HARRIS presented the petition of Thomas M. English, administrator of the estate of Richard Fitzpatrick, deceased, praying for the 

payment of a judgment of the Court of Claims in favor oftha.t est.1.te; 

which was referred to the Committee on Claims. 

Mr. TELLER presented a concurrent resolution of the Legislature 

of Colorado, which was read, and referred to the Colllllii ttee on Finance, as follows: 

Hon. H. M. TELLER: 

STATE OF COLORADO, GOVERNOR'S OFFICE, 

Denver, Colo., December 28, ~883. 

In compliance with the request embodied therein, I have t.he honor to trans- mit herewith a certified copy of house concurrent resolution No. G, "expr ing the sense of the General Assem.llly of Colorado in regard to the coinage of sil- ver." 

Very respectfully, your obedient serB'~~JAMC II. EATON, GovernOJ', 

Substitute for house concurrent re o1ution No.6, expressing the sen e of the General Assembly of Colorado in regard to the coinage of silver. 

Whereas class legislation, under whatever guise, has always been condemned as being inimical t-o the best interests and subversive of the rights of the people; and 

'Vhereas the discriminationa~nst silver, which is one of the principal sources of wealth of this country, now being pract-iced by monometallists is ca.lcul::~cted 

to produce public discord and disaster: Therefore, Be it resolved by the General A.ssembly of the State of Colurado, First. That we are in favor of the free and unlimited coinage of silver (of the present standard value ~f 4121 grains to the dollar) the same as gold, and do earnestly recom.mend Con-
1886. CONGRESSIONAL RECOR:Q-SENATE. 643 

gress and the incoming Administration to use alllegitil:nate means to secure leg- is1ation to this end; and 

Resolt,ed, Second. That our governor be requested to forward duly attested 

copies of these resolutions to the President and Vice-President elect of the United 

St..'\tes, t.he Speaker of the national House of Representatives, and to our Senators and Representatives in Congress, and also to the governors of the,different 

Stales of the Union, asking their co-operati>e action upon this all-important question. Approycd March 5, 1885. 

STATE OF' CoLORADO, 

Secretary's Office, ss. 

I, :Melvin Edwards, secretary of state of the State of Colorado, do hereby cer- tify the foregoing to be a correct transcript of" substitute for house concurrent 

re.'ioTution No.6, expressing the sense of the General Assembly of Colorado in re- g:ud to the coinage of silver, •' approved by the governor March 5, 1885, and filed in my office on the 5th day of 1\Iarch, A . D.1885. 

In testimony whereof I have hereunto set my hand and affixed the great seal 

of the State of Colorado, at Denver, this 2.8th day of December, A. D.1885. 

[sEAL.] MELVIN EDWARDS, 

Secretary of State. 

. REPORTS OF COl\IMITI'EES. 

Mr. SEWELL, from the Committee on Military Affairs, to whom was 

referred the bill (S. 222) to amend section 1661 of the Revised Statutes, 

making an annual appropriation to provide arms and equipments for the 

militia, reported it with amendments, and submitted a report thereon. 

Mr. SEW ELL. I am instructed by the Committee on the Library 

to report to the Senate a communication addressed to that committee 

by Mr. George:Ticknor Cm·tis on additional accommodations for the Library. It is a valuable contribution to the literature of the country on 

that subject, us it gives some practical suggestions, aDd I move that it 

be p rinted and referred to the Select Committee on AdditionalAccommodations for the Library of Congress. -

Tbe PRESIDING OFFICER. '!'he communication will be printed 

and referred to the Select Committee on Additional Accommodations for 

the Library of Congress. 

1\fr. SPOONER, from the Committee on CJaims, to whom was referred 

-the bill (S. 269) for the relief of W. H. Powell, reported it with amendmenis1 and submitted a report thereon. 

Mr. PIKE, from the Committee on Claims, to whom were referred 

the following bills, asked to be discharged from their further consideration and that they be referred to the Committee on Post-Offices and 

Post-Roads; which was agreed to: 

A bill (S. :n 7) for the relief of Horace A. W. Tabor; and 

A bill (S.1042) to pay B.S. James for transporting the United Sta.tes 

mails. 

Mr. PIKE, from the Committee on Claims, submitted the following 

· report : 

The Committee on Claims, to whom was refelTed the petition of A. W. Shaffer, asking for relief in the reimbursement claim of Joseph Ivery Baker, lat-e captain Fourth Massachusetts Cavalry, have considered the same, and, in accordance 

with the resolution of the Senate of February 7,18.84, reoort as fol1ows: 

That they b a ve referred the same to the Court of Claims u,nder the provisions of an net en tit led "An act to afford assistance and relief to Congress and the 

Executive Dcp!l.rtments in the investigation of claims ahd demands against the Gover~ment," approved .!\larch 3, 1.885. 

BILLS INTRODUCED. 

1\lr. EDl\IUNDS introduced a hill (S. 1076) providing for the collection of statistics t.ouching marriage and divorce; which was read twice 

by its title, and referred to the' Committee on the Judiciary. 

Mr.· DA 'VES introduced a bill (S. 1086) to a-ccept and ratify an agreemen t made by the Sisseton and W a.hpeton bands of Sioux IndiallS: and 

to grant a right of way for the Chicago, Milwaukee and Saint Paul 

Railway through the Lake Traverse reservation, in Dakota; which was 

read twice by its title, and referred to the Committee on Indian Affairs. 

Mr. COCKRELL. I desire to withdraw Senate bill No. 899, granting 

a pension to Thomas G. Newman, and introduce a bill granting a pension to Thomas G. Newnam. The gentleman does not want his :Iiame 

to go upon the record-incorrectly. 

The bill (S. 1087) granting a. pension to Thomas G. Newnam was read 

twice by its title, and referred to the Committee on Pensions. 

Mr. CONGER introduced a bill (S. 1088) to amend and re-enact section 4289 of the Revised Statutes, relative to the limitation of the liability of the owners of vessels; which was read twice by its title, and 

referred to the Committee on Commerce. 

Mr. FRYE introduced a bill (S. 1089) for the relief of the merchant 

marine of the United States engaged in the foreign trade; which was 

read twice by its title. 

Mr. FRYE. This is the bill for the relief of the merchant marine 

prepared by the joint committee of the Marine Association of New 

York and the lllltional board of steam navigation. I move that it be 

referred to the Committee on Commerce. 

The motion was agreed to. 

Mr. VANWYCK introduced a bill (S. 1090).grantinga pension to G. 

R. Turner, M. D.; which was read twice by its title, _and referred to 

the Committee on Pensions. 

Mr. Mc~ULLAN introduced a bill (S. 1091) to authorize the increase 

of the capital stock of the First National Bank of Shakopee, Minn.; 

which was read twice by its title, and referred to .the Committee on Finance. CHANGE OF REFERIDTCE. 

1\lr. HALE. Yesterday I introduced a bill (S. 1071) for the relief of 

Frances W. Dyer, and through my mistake itwas referred to the Committee on Finance. I ask that that committee be discharged from its 

further consideration, and that the bill be referred to the Committee on 

Clainis, which considered and reported it in the last Congress. 

The PRESIDING OFFICER. There being no objection, the change 

of reference is made accordingly. 

PAPERS WITHDRAWN AND REFERRED. 

On motion of Mr. HARRIS, it was 

Ordered, That the papers in the case of Charles W. Faulcke be taken from the 

files and referred to the Committee on Claims. · 

On motion of Mr. PIKE, it was 

Ordered, That the papers in the claim of Albert H. Emery be taken from the 

files and referred to the Committee on Claims, no adverse report having been 

made. 

On motion of Mr. CALL, it was 

Ordered, That James :J. Johnst.on have leave to withdraw his petition and papers from the files, there having been no adverse report. 

STATISTICAL ABSTRACT FOR 18.85. 

Mr. MORRILL. I ask for the adoption of the following order: 

Ordered, That 1,000 ~pies of the Statistical Abstract of the United States for 

the year 1885 be printed for the use of the Senate; 200 of which number shall be He for the use of the Committee on Finance. also introduced a bill (S. 107'7) granting a pension to Newcomb 

Parker; whicq was read twice by its title, and referred to the Committee on Pensions. The Senate, by unanimous consent, proceeded to consider the resoHe also introduced a bill (S. 1078) granting a pension to William C. lution. 

Wirt; which was read twice by its title, and referred to the Committee 1\lr. M:ORRILL.tedl will state thaHt this docdumhile~t hhas a1reafiy beedn on Pensions. ?rd~red to be prin ~y the other ouse, an w e t ~ o/pe lB stan -

1\lr;·wrr..soN, of Iowa, introduced a bill (S. 1079) to regulate the ~It was th?ught adVISable that we should have an additionall!-umb~r 

rate of postage on "fourth-class matter;" which was read twice by its prmted. It lB a very valuable document and a grea~ ~any copies of It 

title, and referred to the Committee on Post-Offices and Post-Roads. are _called for, and there ar~ none later than ~he edition for 18.83 now 

Mr. HOAR introduced a bill (S. 1080) for the erection of a statue avap.able. As ~e mn.tter_m the abstract mainly Iefem to top1~.over 

and monumen t to James Madison; which was read twice by its title, w~ch theCo~tteeonFinancehavecontrol, weaskfor200additwnal 

and referred to the Committee on the Library. cop1es for serv_ICe there. 

l\lr. HARRIS introduced a bill (S.1081) for the relief of William G. The resolution was agreed to. 

Ford, administrator of John G. Robinson, deceased; which was read PAYl\IENTS TO INTERNAL-R~lJE COLLECTORS. 

twice by its title, and referred to the Committee on ClainlS. J'\Ir. BECK. Under the call for resOlutions yesterday, the Senator 

1\lr.-MILLER, of New York, introduced a bill (S. 1082) to amend 

t he military r ecord of Ch..'\rles w. Lambert; which wa>9 read twice by from Vermont [Mr. MoRRILL] o:fferedaresolution, which was objected to by the Senator from Tennessee [Mr.Il.A..Rrus] and myself. I desire 

its titb, and r eferred to the Committee on Military A:ffa-i:rs. now, if it is the proper time, to call it up and state the reasons why I 

Mr. VOORHEES. By request of the Sedgwick Post, No. 38, Depart- objected. 

ment of Indiana, Grand Army of the Republic, I introduce ·a bill. S · The bill (S. 1083) to amend certain sections of the Revised Statutes of The PRESIDING OFFICER. If the enator .from Kentucky will 

the United Eta.tes relating to pensions and certain laws relating to pen- kindly wait a few moments until the Chair has exhausted the call for 

• 

sions enacted since the revision of the statutes, and for other purposes, "concurrent or other resolutions" the resolution offered yesterday by the Senator from Vermont will be in order. was read twice by its title, and referred to the Committee on Pensions. 

1\lr. JACKSON (by request) introduced a bill (S. 1084) to authorize 

t he purchase of five manuscript volumes (being letter-books) of William 

Vans Murray, formerly minister at the Hague and at Paris; which was read twice by its title, and referred to the Committee on the Library. 

Mr. INGALLS introduced a bill (S. 1085) for the relief of Terrence 

O'Connor, minor child of Thomas O'Connor, deceased; which was read 

twice by its title, and referred to the Committee on Pensions. 

BERLIY CONFERENCE ON CO:NGO FREE STATE. 

:Mr. MORGAN submitted the following resolution; which was read: 

Resol'!Jed, That the general act of the conference of Berlin, relating to the Free 

State of the Congo, which was signed and promulgated on 26th Jrebruary, 1885, a copy of which is now presented, be referred to the Committee on Foreign Re· lations, and that the same be translated under the direction of said committee 

and printed. And so mnch of the President's message as relates to this subject is also referred to said committee. 
644 CONGRESSIONAL RECORD-SENATE. JANUARY 14, 

Mr. MORGAN. I sendtothedesk acopyofthe original general act, as it is termed, of the conference at Berlin, in reference to the Congo 

country. The President, in his message to Congress, refers to this topic 

in such a way that I fear some unnecessary animadversion has been 

made upon that conference, and also upon the minister who participated 

in it. I am not aware that any authentic English translation of this 

act has been made, and I desire very much that we may have a translation of it about which there can be no dispute. For this purpose I have 

offered the resolution providing that the translation shall be made under the direction of the Committee on Foreign Relations. The President has not communicated to the Senate, so far as I have been advised, 

certainly not with his message, any of the papers that related to the Berlin conference, but a statement is made in the message to the following 

effect: 

A oonference of delegates of Lhe principal commercial nations was held at Ber- lin last winter to discuss methods whereby the Congo Basin might be kept open to the world's trade. Delegates attended on beho.lf of the United States on the 

understanding that their part should be merely deliberative, without imparting to the resulls any binding character, so far as the United States were concerned. 

This reserve was due to the indisposition of this Government to share in any disposal by an international congress of jurisdictional questions in remote foreign territories. The results of the conference were embodied in a formal act of 

the nature of an international convention, which laid down certain obligations purporting to be binding ou the signatories, subject to ratification within one year. 

As I am informed of the substance of that general act, it is mi apprehended in the message. Our minister at Berlin, who participated 

in this European conference, did not undertake to bind, nor <litl he bind, 

the Government of the United States in any sense whatsoever to this 

agreement as a convention between this and any other power. No ac- tion had been taken by that officer which made it neaessary that the 

Senate of the United States should pass upon anything that be bad done; 

but the agreement of the conference established through the enlightened judgment of all the gt·eat European powers a. status quo in regard 

to the law which should obtain in the further conduct of affairs in what 

I may term the waist of Africa, the belt about the equator, which 

reaches from ocean to ocean. The Congo State had its boundaries in effect determined by the agreement of that conference, and it included the watershed of the Congo 

River, practically placing the great basin of the Congo within this free 

state, which, however, was enlarged when it came towant the Atlantic 

Ocean on the west, for the purpose of getting a coast-line from which 

more immediate or more convenient access might be had to that part of 

the Congo River called Stanley Pool, above the falls, by railway or by some other me..'l.IlS of local access. The conference went very far beyond that, however, antl made cerL'tin 

very valuable antl important agreements in reference to a long line of 

the coast of Africa. reaching, I believe, from 5° north of the cqua,tor 

down to the mouth of the Zambezi River. That agreement, as long as it is maintained by the European powers who have adhered to this con- ference, or by any other powers who may hereafter adhere to it, will be 

found to be of great advantage to the people of the United States who 

may have commerce in that country, because it will protect them in the 

enjoyment of all theirrightsalmost as completely as they would be protected by proper authority within the boundaries of the United States. 

In other words, a very free and liberal declaration of principles has been 

established in that country, which the governments who have acceded 

to the agreement engage that they will put in force and maintain so 

long as the agreement stands. 

But notwithstanding the very great ad vantages which woulcl inure to 

the people of any commercial nation who should visit that country for 

purposes of trade, neither the preceding administration nor the minister of the United States who was at Berlin considered that the Government of the United States had given its consent in any way at all to 

become a party to the agreement as an engagement. A mere declaration has been submit ed to the jud~ment of the enlightened world by 

this great conference upon this very important topic and in regard to 

this very important country, and the question whether we shall accede 

to that agreement is one that is entirely a matter of option on ourpart. 

It is something that need not be transacted even through ~e diplomatic 

functions of the Government. An act of Congress originated by any 

member of this body or of the other House which should declare that the 

Government of the United States adheres to or accedes to that agreement would make us a party to it precEely as it does to postal conventions and various other conventions ofthatkind which have been agreed 

upon by other nations, and to which we have the right to accede if we choose or to withhlod our concession if we please. 

I fear that some injustice bas been done by a misapprehension or a misinterpretation of this act on the part of the Government of the United 

States toward onr late minister at Berlin, who; I am satisfied, in the 

most enlightened way and with the greatest care and circumspection, 

has not exceeded his authority and has not sought in any way to involve us in entangling alliances in respect of any foreign ceuntry, but 

who has submitted, along with the other powers who were concerned in 

that conference, a great and general act, the benefits of which I have no doubt will be felt by generations of men through long long years to come. I desire, therefore, that the Committee on Foreign Relations may take 

the subject up and·see whether this act is of the character that it is described to be in the message of the President. 

Mr. ALLISON. Mr. President, I hope the resolution of the Senator 

from Alabama will be adopted; but I do not rise to speak to that resolution, but rather to call the attention of the Senate, and especially of the 

Committee on Foreign Relations, to the statement made in the document which I have before nie, printed some days ago, respecting the 

appointment of Mr. Kelley as minister to Austria. The Secretary of 

State has, it appears, in this document, in a communication to the 

minister to Vienna, stated that 1tir. Kasson, who was appointed to .Madrid during the term of the present Senator from New York [Mr. 

EVARTS] as Secr·etary of State, was objected to by that country and 

afterward appointed minister to Vienna. That statement appears in 

this printed document, which is now I believe before the Committee on 

Foreign Relations. I desire to say, on the very best authority, that 

that statement is wholly erroneous, that no objection was made~ by 

Spain to the appointment of Ur. Kasson; and in saying this I onght to 

state that I have no doubt the Secretary of State was misled by a sub-. ordinate in his office who gathered some information from newspaper 

comments made about that time and not from any statement made 

through any of the ministers or authorities of Spain. · IseethattheSenatorfromNewYorkisgivinghi attention. !remember that at the time he did me the honor to consult with me somewhat 

respecting the appointment of Mr. Kasson to Austria in lieu of Spain. 

After Ur. Kasson had been appointed to Ua<lrid there occurred a va- cancy in the mission to Austria-Hungary, and the Secretary of State 

then asked me if I believed Mr. Kasson would prefer the Vienna mission to the Madrid mission, and I stated to him that I would commu- nicate with Mr. Kasson, but I had no doubt he would prefer Vienna. 

I did communicate with him, amt he sta.ted that owing to the situation 

in the East he would much prefer to go to Vienna, if agreeable to the 

Government; and before the appointment was actually made: as Iremember, to 1\fadrid, but after the tender of that appointment, Mr. 

Kasson was selected for the Vienna mission, no objection having been 

made from any official quarter to his appointment to the Spanish mission. 

For the purpo e of making it clear that I am right in these sugg~­

tions I ask the Secretary to re..'td the letter addressed by the then Secretary of State, now a Senator from New York, to Mr. Kasson on this 

subject., a copy of which I understand has also been presented to the 

present Se~retary of State: WASHINGTO::o<, D. C., January 5,1886. 

DEAR Sm: In answer to you1· inquiry touching the statement that the Spani h Go'\'ernment made objection to your appointment ns minister to that coun- try in 1817 and during my term a Secretary of State, I take pleasure in saying tllnt no such que tion Wft ever 1-aised. . The appointment for Madrid, originally proposed by me, wns changed, upon your preference, to Vienna., and for reasons having no connection whatever 

with or knowledge of either goYernment. I am, yours, very truly, 

WM. M. EVARTS. 

lion. JoliN A. KA 0::-<, Washi11!]lon. 

Mr. ALLISON. I make this statementfor the purpose of placing on 

record here, where this communication wasfirst·made public, the facts 

in this case, and not with any view, of course, of criticising the State 

Department, for I have no doubt it a-cted in perfect good faith but upon 

imperfect and inaccurate information in respect to the subject. I do it 

in justice to a constituent of mine who served ably in the other House 

and for some years as our minister to Vienna and, as was well stated by 

the Senator from Alabama, at Berlin. 

Ur. VEST. Will the Senator, before he takes his seat, state what 

communication he refers to here? 

:Ur. ALLISON. I refer to the communi~'l.tion made by the Secretary 

of State in answer to a resolution of the Senate in which is published a 

letter addressed by the Secretary of State to Mr. Francis, the American 

minister then at Vienna-the Kelley correspondence, in which the Secretary of St.<tte communicated to 11ir. Francis that Mr. Kasson, a citizen 

of my State, had been appointed as minister to Spain and objected to by 

that Government and afterward sent to Vienna. without objection. I 

merely wished to place upon record in as public a way as this letter appears the fact that this was a misconception on the part of the Secretary 

of State of the facts in the case, and that he was led into it, as I have 

alre..'l.dy stated, by a subordinate in the Department of State. 

Mr. VEST. I am very glad indeed to hear this statement. As a. matter of course it ought to be known. I must say, however, that if it 

was a misunderstanding or misconception it was pretty general throughout the country at the time. I know I saw it in the papers. I recollect that it was stated recently that Mr. Ka.&on was not acceptable to 

the Spanish Government on account of some views expressed in a public addre...~ in regard to the annexation of Cuba to the United States. 

It was so stated at the time. There was nothing reflecting on hU1 personal character in any way, but it was because of some statemtnt that 

he had made in regard to the Government in Cuba and the propriety 

of that island being annexed to the United Srates. 

Mr. EVARTS. Mr. President, I need to add nothing to what I ex- pressed in the letter which I sent to Mr. Kasson a:ill which has been 

read at the desk. The Senator from Missouri is quite right in thinking 

that there was newspaper comment in that direction and with that pur-

. 
1886. CONGRESSIONAL RECORD-SENATE. 645 

port; but the transaction, so far as the Government was concerned, ·in 

the arrangement of these two missions, had no connection with that 

subject whatever, and the interpretation of the press upon that arrangement of the two missions was voluntary on its part and not provoked 

by nor justified by the administration. Mr. Kasson, well known to 

all of us at that time as now, had shown a disposition to undertake a foreign service if the administration would pia~ it at his disposal. 

With that view I was authorized by the President to propose to him 

the mission to Spain, which he accepted. .Another gentleman, who had 

been offered the Austrian mission but had declined the foreign service 

because of reasons that he thought might not permit him to undertake 

it, had shown some disposition to find a motive and an inducement suitable to his literary character and pursuits as well as-his public capaci-: 

ties to undertake the Spanish mission, though he had declined the 

Austrian; and upon that consideration I was able to present to Mr. Kas- son the choice of the ..Austrian mission, higher in grade, in ~moluments, 

and rank, I think as well, and the other gentleman took the Spanish 

mission, ::M:r. Lowell, who afterward was transferred to the Court of 

St. James. 

The PRESIDING OFFICER. The Senator from-.A.Iabama asks for 

the immediate consideration of the resolution offered by him. Is there 

objection? 

Ur. EDMUNDS. Let it be read again. 

The PRESIDING OFFICER. The resolution will be again read. 

The Chief Clerk read the resolution. 

The resolution was considered by unanimous consent, and agreed to. 

REFERENCE OF PRESIDENT'S MESSAGE. 

Mr. EDMUNDS. In that connection I move, what ought to have 

been done before, that all those parts of the message of the President 

submitted at the commencement of this session relating to foreign 

affairs be referred to the Committee on Foreign Relations. 

The motion was agreed to. 

PAYMENTS TO INTERNAL-REVENUE COLLECTORS. 

The PRESIDING OFFICER. "Concurrent or other resolutions " are still in order. If none others are to be presented the Chair lays before the Senate the resolution submitted yesterday by the Senator from 

Vermont (::M:r. MORRILL]. 

Mr. BECK. Let the resolution be read. 

The Chief Clerk read the resolution, as follows: 

Resolved, That the Secretary of the Treasury be directed to furnish information to the Senate a to whether or not any collectors of internal-revenue, not confirmed by the Senate, have received any portion of the salary pertaining to the office, contrary to the law of Marchl., 1879, which provides that •• no collector 

shall be entitled to any portion of the salary pertaining to the office unless such 

collector shall have been confirmed by the Senate, except in cases of com.m.ission to 1ill yacancies occurring during the recess of the Senate." 

Mr. BECK. Mr. President, when that resolution was offered yesterday, as I observedafewmomentsago, the Senatorfrom Tennessee [Mr. 

HARRIS] and myself objected to its consideration and asked that it lie over. I did so for the reason that all the information that can be given, 

in my opinion, the Senate has now. Every collector of internal revenue since 1879, who was appointed in the place of an officer suspended, has 

received his payregularly, under all administrations, all of them arere- ceiving it now, so that there is no necessity for any official information on the subject. 

I went to the Department this morning, saw the First Comptroller and 

his deputy, in charge of these matters, and I found that the cases are very 

numerous in which regular payments have for years past been made to 

internal-revenue officers appointed in cases of suspension of others. It 

has been done, as they understand and as I understand, not in violation 

oflaw but in pursuance oflaw. We all know that in 1867 the tenureof-office law was passed to prevent the removal by President Johnson of 

any class of officers. That law was very sweeping; but after the election 

of President Grant, in 1869, this provision was made, section 1768 of the 

Revised Statutes: 

SEC. 17GB. During any recess of the Senate the President is authorized, in his 

discretion, to suspend any civil officer appointed by and with the advice and con- sent of the Senate, except judges of the courts of the Unit-ed States, until the end 

of the next session of the Senate, and to design. ate some suitable personJ subject to be removed, in his discretion, by the designation of another, to pertorm the 

duties of such suspended officer in the mean time; and the person so designated 

shall take the oath and give the bond required by law to be taken and given by the suspended officer, and shall, during the time he performs the duties of such 

officer, be entitled to the salary and emoluments of the office, no part of which 

shall belong to the officer suspended. 

That is all that it is necessary to read. That continued to be the law 

until March 2, 1875. Observe that in President Johnson's time all re- movals were substantially prevented. After the Republican party came 

into absolute power with a President of their own choice, then the law 

I have just read was passed. In 1875 serious apprehensions were entertained in regard to the election of a Democratic President, and it was not proposed that he should have such fa,r-reaching power over officials 

as was given in 1869while General Grant was President, and therefore 

this law was enaeted: 

And no collector shall be entitled to any portion of the salary pertaining to the 

office unless such collector shall have been confirmed by the Senate except in casee of commissions to fill vacancies which mav have happened by d~th or res- ignaUon during the recess of the Senate. • 

Mr. INGALLS. What is the date ofthat? _ Mr. BECK. March 2, 1875. After Mr. Hayes obtained possession 

that provision was found to be very embarrassing, because a number of 

cases occurred even under a Republican administration where changes 

had to be made and men suspended for other causes than death or resignation during the recess of the Senate. The Supreme Court of the 

United States in the mean time had occasion to consider the question in 

Farden's case (see 99 United States Reports, page 10), in which the question came before the court in a case arising prior to that act of 1875 on the claim of a man who had been deputy collector and had been appointed by the Secretary of the Treasury to 1ill the place of a suspended 

officer. He had authority from Mr. Douglass, Commissioner of Internal 

Revenue, and from the Treasury Department to assume the duties of 

collector. The question was presented whether a suspension created a vacancy in the office, and the Supreme Court-I will read only a few 

words of its decision-said: 

'Whatever the legal relation of the individual may have been, in the strict technicalsense it is clear, we think, that for all practical purposes during the con- tinuance of the order of suspension the office was vacant and without any incumbent to discharge the duties which the law requires to be performed by the 

collector of the internal revenue. Plainly it was not a case of sickness or tem- porary disability, and consequently the duties were not devolved upon the 

deputy as in that case made and provided. 

They decided that the suspension of the man in that case to all intents 

and purposes created a vacancy, and they directed the salary to be paid 

to the man appointed in place of the officer suspended. Judge Clifford 

closed the opinion thus: 

Suffice it to say that the court, in view of the whole case, is of the opinion 

that the claimant is entitled to receive the salary and com.m.lssions allowed by 

law to the collector of internal revenue during the period that he performed 

those duties under the direction of the Secretary of the Treasury, as found by 

the court below, and that the suspension by the supervisor of internal revenue, and the action of the Secretary of the Treasury directing him to continue in the 

office until a successor to the suspended officer was appointed and qualified, cre- ated such a vacancy, within the meaning of the act of Congress, for all practi- cal purposes in the administration of the duties of the office as entitles the claim- ant to that compensation. Assume that to be so, and it follows that there is no error in the record. 

That was decided in October, 1878. In Uarch, 1879, the Democratic 

party was about to take possession of the Senate of the United States, 

and it became somewhat important for the Republicans to modify the 

law that was passed in 1875, in order to allow their officials to be paid. 

Therefore, on the 1st of March, 1879, three days before the majority in 

this body became Democratic, this law was passed, repealing the former 

act of 1875 and providing: 

And no coliector shall be entitled to any portion of the salary pertaining to the 

office unless such collector shall have been confirmed by the Senate, except in cases of commissions to fill vacancies occurring during the recess of the Senate. 

The Supreme Court had decided that a vacancy was created by the 

suspension of an officer holding the office in Farden's case, and the law 

of 1875, which limited the right to pay only successors appointed in cases of death or resignation was so far repealed as it might have become 

very troublesome again if the Democracy should not confirm the men appointed while they controlled confirmations. Therefore the provision was made broad-broad enough to cover all vacancies. That remains 

the law to-day. Under that law every Comptroller, Republican and 

Democrat, has paid the men who have done the work when officials are suspended, under the construction given to the effect of a suspension 

by the Supreme Court of the United States. 

:ltir. HARRIS. Before confirmation? 

Mr. BECK. Of course before confirmation they are paid regularly 

every month or every quarter. I have inquired of the Treasury officials, and find that to be so. Therefore it was that I objected to the assumption in the resolution of the Senator from Vermont [Mr. MoRRILL] that the law l:!ad been violated. The Senator from Vermont may 

still entertain a different opinion, but I do not think his colleague does. 

That is all I caro to say. 

Mr. MORRILL. Mr. President, the Senator from Kentucky has read 

the different aets of Congress. The first one merely went upon the 

idea that two officers should not draw salary for the same office, confining it to one. That was underthetenure-of-office act. The second one merely provided for payment to an appointee to succeed in cases of 

death or resignation. The last act, passed in 1879, it seems to me upon a plain reading of it refers to all collectors who shall not have received 

the confirmation of the Senate except those appointed w fill vacancies 

during a recess. That act provides that--

No collector shall be entitled to any portion of the salary pertaining to the 

office unless such collector shall have been confirmed by the Senate, except in cases of commissions to fill vacancies occurring during the recess of the Senate. 

· I do not t.hink that the decision of the Supreme Court or the argument 

of the Senator from Kentuck7 covers vacancies created by the President 

himself. I deny that the President of the United States can not only 

appoint men to office but that he c..'tn also take money out of the Treasury to. pay them. It seems to me that would be a usurpation of the 

prerogative of Congress. Here is a law on the statute-book, and I am 

rather surprised that the Senator from Kentucky is not in favor of ha.ving 

the Secretary of the Tre..'lsury obey all laws. That is his usual position 

in relation to certain statutes, and I am rather surprised that he should 

be opposed to the enforcement of the execution of the law in this case. M:urifestly this is a resolution that refers to information that it is 
646 CONGRESSIONAL RECORD-SENATE. JANUARY 14, 

proper not only for the Senate to have, but for parties who undertake 

to assume the duties of an office on suspension, which is not a vacancy 

and may not become a vacancy. They ought to know whether they are to have pay or not, and know that if they should not be confirmed 

they would not draw any pay. It strikes methatunderthisprovision 

of the law, if these parties that have beennominatedin the cases of sus- pension by the President, but not nominated to fill vacancies, lliwe been 

drawing pay, it is contrary to the provisions of this statute. 

Mr. BECK. 1\fr. President, I did not rise to object to the Senator 

from Vermont sending such a resolution to the Treasury. I have stated 

exactly why I objected to it yesterday, believingitto be absolutely use- less, believing that the laws are complied with as well as the practice 

under former Secretaries and the present Secretary, and that the actions 

they have taken are according to law; but if the Senator desires any 

further information on the subject and desires a report, for one I have no sort of objection. The practice always has been what it is now- since the passage of the act of 1879. 

1\fr. COCKRELL. I offer the following amendment to be added to 

the resolution, which I hope the Senator from Vermont will accept: 

.And also whether the payments made to such collectors since March 4, 1885, were prior to that date made to uch collectors under like conditions. 

Mr. MORRILL. No objection. 

The PRESIDING OFFICER. The resolution will be so modified. 

The resolution as modified was agreed to. 

MESSAGE FRO:\! THE HOUSE. 

A message from the House ofRepresentatives, by l\fr. CLARK, its Clerk, 

announced that the House had passed the bill (S. 128) to authorize the 

Secretary of the Treasury t.o issue a duplicate certi.fi.cate of deposit to 

the People's National Bank of Lawrenceburg, Ind. 

The message also announced that the House had passed a bill (H. R. 

3253) to amend section 1090 of the Revised Statutes, relating to interest on judgments rendered by the Court of Claims; in which it requested 

the concurrence of the Senate. 

.ADJOURNMENT TO 1\IOND.A.Y. 

The PRESIDING OFFICER. If there be no further morning busi- ness the Senate will proceed to the considera~on of the Calendar un- der Rule VIII. 

Mr. INGALLS. lli. President, I move that when the Senate adjourn to-day it be to meet on Monday next. 

The PRESIDING OFFICER. The question is on the motion of the 

Senator from Kansas. · The motion was agreed to. 

SIOUX RESERV .ATION IN DAKOTA. 

The PRESIDING OFFICER. The first bill in order under Rule 

VITI will be stated. 

The CHIEF CLERK. Senate bill No. 260--

Mr. DAWES. Are not bills passed over yesterday without losing 

their place on the Calendar first to be taken up? There is Senate bill 

No. 52. 

The PRESIDING OFFICER. Where does the Senator find the bill now upon the Calendar? 

1\Ir. DAWES. I have not found the Calendar. 

The PRESIDING OFFICER. That bill was passed over without 

prejudice. The Chair thinks the Senat.or from Massachusetts was out 

of the Chamber at the time. 

Mr. DAWES. Yes, sir. 

l\fr. HARRIS. What is the order of business of the bill referred to? 

The PRESIDING OFFICER. No. 34. TheChairrecollects the bill was passed over without prejudice, retaining its place on the Calendar. 

l\fr. DAWES. I should like to have it passed now, if it can be done. 

:rtfr. HARRIS. Does the Senator from Massachusetts think it can be 

considered under the five-minute rule? 

Ur. DAWES. I do not apprehend that it will cause any debate. But 

it is immaterial to me under what rule it is considered. I do not think 

it will require debate. 

The PRESIDING OFFICER. Does the Chair understand the Senator from Massachusetts to ask for the consideration now of the bill 

mentioned by him? 

l\fr. DAWES. I should like to have it considered now. The PRESIDING OFFICER. Is there objection to the request? 

l\fr. CONGER. What is the bill? 

The PRESIDING OFFICER. The Senator from Massachusetts asks 

that the Senate proceed now to the consideration of Order of BusineSs 

34, the title of which will be read. 

The SECRETARY. A bill (S. 52) to divide a portion of the reservation of the Sioux Nation of Indians, in Dakota, into separate reservations, and to secure the relinquishment of the Indian title to :theremainder. 

The PRESIDING OFFICER. Is there objection? The Chair hears none. 

The Senate, as in Committee of the Whole, proceeded to consider the 

bill. 

lli. DAWES. I should like as the bill is read to ask action of the 

Senate on the amendments reported by the Committee on Indian Affairs, so that it need not be read over the second time. 

The PRESIDING OFFICER. The bill will be read. 

The Secretary proceeded to read the bill. The bill was reported from 

the Committee on IndianAffairs with amendments. Thefirstamendmentofthe committee was, in section 2, line 5, after the word "namely," 

to strike out the following words: 

Commencing in the middle channel of the Missouri River, opposite the mouth 

of White River; thence down the middle channel of said Missouri River to the 

south line of Brule County; thence west on the south line of Brule County to the west line of said county, including, however, entirely within said reservations 

all islands, if any, in said river; thence due outh to the forty-third parallel of 

latitude; thence west along said parallel of latitude to a point due south from 

the source of the principal branch of Pass Creek; thence due north to the said source of Pass Creek; thence down said creek to the White River; thence down White River to the place of beginning in the 1\fi ouri River. 

And in lieu thereof to insert: 

Commencing in the middle of the main channel of the Missouri River at the 

intersection of the south line of Brule County; thence down said middle of the 

main channel of said river to the intersection of the ninety-ninth degree of west longitude from Greenwich; thence due south to the forty-third parallel of latitude to a point due south from the: source of the principal branch of Pass Creek; 

thence due north to the said source of the said principal branch of Pass Creek; 

thence down Pass Creek to White River; thence down White River to a point intersecting the west line of Gregory County extended north; thence south on said extended west line of Gregory County to the intersection of the south line 

of Brule County extended west; thence due east on said south line of Brule 

County extended to the point of beginning in the 1\Iissouri River, including en- tirely within said reservation all islands, if any, in said river. 

Mr. DAWES. There is a mistake in the print of this amendment, and 

I move to amend the amendment in line 22 by inserting after the word 

''latitude'' the words ''thence west along said parallel. '' Those words seem to have been left out in the print. 

The amendment to the amendment was agreed to. 

The amendment as amended was agreed to. 

The reading of the bill was resumed. 

The next amendment of the Committee on Indian Affairs was, in sec- tion 6, line 10, after the word "seventy-two, " to insert" and the south 

halfoftownship 109, range 71;" so as to read: 

The whole of township 106, range 70; township 107, range 71; township 108, range 71; township 108, range 72; township 109, range 72, and the south half of 

township 109, range 71, and township 107, range 70, except sections 1, 2, 3, 4, 9, 10, 

11, and 12, and such parts as lie on the east or left bank of the lllis'3ouri River, of 

the following townships, &c. 

The amendment was agreed to. 

The next amendment was in section 6, line 22, after the word '' sev- enty-font," to insert "south half of;" and in line 23, after the word 

"seventy-five," to strike out "township 109, range 7G;" so as to read: 

Township 106, range 71· township 107, range72; township108, range73; town- ship 108, range 7(; townshlp 108, range 75; township 108, range 76; township 

109, range 73; township 109, range 74; south half of township 109, range 75, and 

township 107, range 73. 

The amendment was agreed to. 

The reading of the bill was resumed and continued to section 7. 

l\fr. DAWES. I offer an amendment after line 21 of section G as part of that section: 

But the Chicago, 1\Iilwaukee and Saint Paul Railway Company and the Da- kota Central Raih'oad Company shall respectively have the ri~ht to purchase of 

the United States at the sum of $2.50 per acre, prior to any white person and to any corporation or association, the fee title to the two separate sections of land 

embraced in said agreement: Provided, The said railway companies shall have 

made the payment and performed the conditions to be by them under said 

agreement performed: .And provided further, That said right of purchase shall 

be exercised witbinsixmonths after the passage of this act. 

The explanation of that is this : These railroad companies have purchased ofthe fudians, with the approval of the Interior Department 

heretofore, t~is ground in connection with their railroads, and have 

paid the Indians 5 an acre for it. This bill will open the whole of 

that territory to public settlement. It is supposed by the railroads 

that the title they thus acquired is only the Indian title of possession. 

They are entitled to the fee, and this secures them the fee. They have 

paid $5 an acre to the Indians for it, and they propose to pay to the 

Treasury of the United States two and a half dollars an acre for what 

interest the United States may possibly have in that land. 

The PRESIDING OFFICER. The question is on the amendment 

proposed by the Senator from M:assachusetts. 

The amendment was agreed to. 

The reading of the bill was resumed and continued to section 20. 

The next amendment of the Committee on Indian Affairs was in sec- tion 20, line 2, after the word ''Island,'' to insert ''and Farm Island;'' oo as to read: 

SEc. 20. That all the lands acquired by the pronsions of this act, except American Island and Farm Island, shall be disposed of by the United States to actual 

settlers only, under the provisions of the homestead laws of the United States. 

The amendment was agreed to. 

:rtfr. DAWES. In section 20, line 21, before the ·words ''American 

Island," I move to insert: 

Or to exclude the said lands or any thereof from the operation of the general 

laws of the United States now in force granting to railway companies the right 

of way and depot gl'Ounds over and upon the public lands. 

:Mr. ALLISON. Does the Senator mean to say that after a homestead has been acquired under the provision of section 20 it shall still 
1886. CONGRESSIONAL RECORD-SENATE. 647 

be within the power of Congress to take the land for railroad or other 

purposes? 

:Mr. DAWES. Under the power of eminent domain. 

Mr. ALLISON. Would not that be so without the specific reservation? 

Mr. DAWES. I suJ>pose it would; but when this.bill passed at the 

last session the Senator from Alabama [?tlr. MoRGAN],· thinking there 

might possibly be some doubt, moved this paragraph as an amendment 

to make it clear; it was not in the original bill. 

Jtlr. ALLISON. I see here the words: 

Or to grant to railroad companies the right of way through said lands. 

That is in the print pf the bilL It does not seem to me to be necessary 

to say that Congress shall have the right to grant the right of way through 

lands that can be condemned under the general laws relating to taking 

private property for public use. · Mr. DAWES. The idea of the amendment is that these lands opened 

to the public shall come under the general law in reference to public 

lands which authorizes the construction of a railway through them on payment of a certain sum of money. That was the object of the amendment suggested to me now by the Senator from WJ.Sconsin as making 

it clear. 

Ml·. ALLISON. What I fear is that under this provision, after a 

man shall have required his title and paid his 50 cents an acre, Congress 

may still under. this provision grant the right of way to a railroad 

over his land. It may be regarded as in the nature of an exception 

to the first provision. 

1'tfr. DAWES. I suppose that Congress has the right to establish a railroad over a man's private land, but not without paying what. the 

land is worth. That is under the right of eminent domain, taking it 

for public purposes. 

Mr. ALLISON. And that would be soifthis entireprovisowere not 

in the bill. 

:1\Ir. DAWES. If anything more could be done under the proviso, 

I would not propose it. 

Mr. ALLISON. I do not object to it with that statement. 

The amendment was agreed to. 

Mr. ALLISON. I ask the Senator from Massachusetts if under the 

last provisjon in section 20 it will be possible for a railway desiring to cross the Missouri River to pass upon or over the island there named? 

Mr. DAWES. I do not think it would. That very question was considered, and as this island was of more use to the m'\ies named 

than it could possibly be to the public, they were very anxious to have 

it appropriated exclusively for a park. To run a railroad across would 

destroy that use of it. The phraseology was drawn to exclude railroads. 

Mr. ALLISON. If it is understood that this section is intended to 

exclude railways from crossing the Missouri River at this point, and 

that has been carefully considered by the committee and is deemed 

wise, I shall interpose no objection. 

Mr. PLUMB. Is it in order to move amendments now? I should 

like to offer some. The PRESIDING OFFICER. All the amendments proposed by the 

committee have not yet been considered, and the reading of the bill 

has not been concluded. 

The reading of the bill was resumed at section 21. The next amendment of the Committee on Indian A:ffairs was, in section 23, after the 

word ''balance,'' to insert the words ''which is hereby reappropriated;'' so as to make the section read: 

SEC. 23. There is hereby approvriated, out of any money in the Treasury not otherwise appropriated, the sum of $>,000, which sum, together with the unex- pended balance, which is hereby reappropriated, of $10,000 appropriated in act of March 3, 1883, for procuring the assent of the Sioux Indians to an agreement 

therein specified, to be expended in defraying the necessary expenses ofprocuring the assent of the Sioux Indians to this act provided in the preceding section; 

and the same shn.ll be expended under the direction of the Secretary of the In- terior, and be repaid to the Treasury from the proceeds of the sale of the land 

authorized by this act. 

The amendment was agreed to. 

The PRESIDING OFFICER. The bill is now open to further amendment. 

Mr. PLUMB. I should lik~ to ask the Senator from Massachusetts 

a question about section 17. I call his attention to the phraseology used 

in line 9. The requirement there is that the Secretary of the Interior 

shall purchase from time to time ''such and so many first-class American 

breeding cows.'' I would suggest that the word '' :first-class'' is liable 

to require him to buy animals worth a great deal of money,'but that 

would be worth less to Indians than they would be to anybody else. I 

would strike out the word ":first-class" at all events, and leave it discretionary. Under that he could buy ani.maJ.s that might cost 500 or 

$1,000 a head or 5, 000 a head. It might be mandatory on him to buy 

that very class and not 1·each those that would do the Indians the most 

good. 

Mr. DAWES. Of course there is no such intention as that, aMtl if 

the bill is open to such a construction I should be glad to have it 

amended, but I should like to have some adjective employed. There are two kinds of American cows that would becalledgood cowsoftbeir 

kind. One is the Southern cow and one is the Northern cow, and I 

should like to have something indicating what kind of stock the In~ 

dians are to have. If the Texas cow were sent up there it would be 

worse than nothing. It is the Iowa and such cows as that which are the only serviceable cows to these Indians. I do not know but that it 

would be safe enough to strike out" first-class" and say "of good quality"-" American breeding cows of good quality." 

The PRESIDING OFFICER. Does the Senator move that amend· 

ment? 

Mr. DAWES. If the Senator from Kansas moves that, I shall not 

object to it. 

Mr. PLUMB. I move that amendment. In line 9 of section 17 I 

move to strike out the word "first-class," and after" cows," in line 10, 

to insert "of good quality;" so as to read: 

Such and so many American breeding cows of good qu~ity, not exeeeding 

25,000 in number. 

The amendment was agreed to. 

Mr. PLUMB. I should like to ask the Senator from Ma achusetts 

what the provisions of the seventh article of the tre.'l.ty of 1868 are. 

Mr. DAWES . . Ionlyspeakfrommemory; I h:we not the article here. 

It is that article of the treaty which requires the United States to fnrnish teachers and houses for every thirty scholars of school age who are furnished to be educated by the Indian authorities. I am not certain, 

but I think that is the article of the treaty. 'I here is a, provision in 

that treaty which runs through all of the treaties made abont that time 

by a commission which ~as sent out, that the United States obligated 

itself to furnish a teacher and school-house for every thirty scholars that were furnished for theschools. The United States has failed largely to 

fulfill that obligation, not only toward. these Indians but toward others, 

and excuses itself because it says that the first obligation is upon the 

Indian himself to furnish his scholars and invite the United States to 

educate them. 

Mr. PLUMB. · Section 20 of the bill I suppose is intended to require 

the settlers to pay to the Government exactly what the Go>ernment 

pays for the land. This section provides that the settlers shall be au- thorized to take these lands under the provisions of the home tearl act, 

but shall pay the sum of 50 cents per acre for each and every acre em- braced in their several homesteads. I suppose that it is intended to 

require the settlers to pay to the Government exa.ctly what the Government pays to the Indians. 

Jtir. DAWES. Yes; the Government pays it to the Indian in this 

way: the fund goes into the Treasury as a fund to be held by the United 

States for the benefit of the Indians, and in that way tho Indians get 

exactly what the settler pays. 

Mr. PLUMB. I would suggest that there is no provision here for 

the payment of fees, aud the section should be amended to require the 

payment of the fees in addition. One of two things would happen: 

either the fees themselves would have to be paid out of the Treasury of 

the United States, or they would not be paid at all, and the laud offi- cers would be required to do the work for nothing. I would say thatIn addition to the fees prescribed by law for similar duties. 

Mr. DAWES. I supposed that would follow of course. !ir. PLUJtfB. I doubt if it would. 

Mr. DAWES. Ifitwouldnotfollow, andiftheSenator, wboismore 

familiar with the method of taking up homesteads, says it would not 

follow, I hope he will put in an amendment to cover the point. The 

matter was discussed in committee, and those members of tbe committee, perhaps less familiar than the Senator with tl1e methods, were of 

opinion that the In'dian would get 50 cents an acre cle!lr of all expenses; 

but if the Senator is in doubt about it I will agree to an amendment. 

Mr. PL UUB. In line 7 of section 20, after the word ''him,'' I move 

to insertIn addition to the fees provided by law. 

Mr. DAWES. I hope that will be adopted if the Senator has any 

doubt about it. 

The PRESIDING OFFICER. The question is on the amendment of 

the Senator from Kansas. 

The amendment was agreed to. 

::\Ir. PLUMB. NowiwouldasktheSenator from Massachusetts why 

he has fixed the period of four years as the time the settlers are to live on this land before getting title instead of :five, which is the provision 

of the present homestea,d law? 

!Ir. DAWES. There are several modifications of the homestead law so far as this land is concerned the Senator will see, and they are of such a stringent nature that it was thought by the committee that four years 

was long enough. To begin with, the settler cau not pay up at the end 

of six months and then sell his land. That provision is to prevent the 

fraudulent use of people to go on and take up land under agreements 

that they will sell to some corporation or some syndicate. They are to 

live on the land four years before they can get any title and before any 

agreement made by them in reference to it will have any force in law. 

They can not make an agreement to sell the land. 

The PRESIDING OFFICER. It is the duty of the Chair to lay before the Senate the unfinished business, the hour of 2 o'clock having 

arrived, being the bill (S. 6) fixing the salaries of the several judges of 

• 
648 CONGRESSIONAL ·RECORD-SENATE. JANUARY 14, 

the United States district courl8 at $5:000 per annum, and for other 

purposes. 

1\Ir. DAWES. We are so near--

Mr. BROWN. I gave notice on Tuesday that I should move at this 

hour to take up the resolution of the Senator from Kentucky [Mr. BECK] 

on the ·silver question, as I desire to submit some remarks. I should 

like if the Senator who has the pending bill in charge would allow it 

to be passed o;er informally that I may make that motion. 

Mr. DAWES. If the bill considered during the morning hour takes 

any considerable time I shall let it go over. 

Mr. BROWN. If it takes but a few minutes I shall not insist on precOOence over it. 

Mr. HOAR. I of course do not propose to object to the laying aside 

of the regular o:J;der informally if my colleague can .finish in a few minutes the bill in his charge. I feel a little guilty in regard to the judges' 

salary bill, which is in my charge, that I have let it pass by now for 

six or eight days for the discussion of matters which will be discussed 

again hereafter when we have a bill before us. 

Mr. DAWES. If this takes any considerable time I will let it go 

over, but it is so nearlythroughthat Ishouldliketohave itdisposedof: 

Mr. BROWN. If it takes but a few minutes, I have no objection. 

The PRESIDING OFFICER. It is understood that the unfinished 

business shall be laid aside for the purpose of finishing the pending 

bill, and also the regular order to hear the Senator from Georgia. 

Mr. HOAR. I must give notice that on the next legislative day after this r shall feel compelled to insist that the pending bill be finished 

at the hour when it is rightfully before the Senate, and if there are to 

be further discussions I think this will not interfere with them, because 

I think the pending bill can be finished in a very few minutes; but I 

will not even assume to take these few minutes from the Senator from 

Georgia. I will let it go over now. 

:Mr. HARRIS. I think the Senator from Texas [Mr. l\lAXEY] who 

is not now in his seat gave notice a day or two since that he would desire to follow the Senator from Georgia upon the silver question. 

The PRESIDING OFFICER. The Senator from Louisianu [Mr. 

EuSTis], the Chair understands, has likewise given such notice. 

Mr. DAWES. The Senator from Kansas and the Senator from Colorado desire to say something about the bill which we ha.ve been considel·ing, and I think I shall be obliged to let it go over. It will come up 

again as unfinished business during the morning hour, if there is any 

time, will it not? · 

The PRESIDING OFFICER. It will. 

Mr. HOAR. I hope we shall have a session to-morrow. 

The PRESIDING OFFICER. The Senate has agreed to adjourn to 

Mondaywhen itadjomnsto-day. Thennfinished businessisinformally 

laid aside. The Senator from Georgia [Mr. BROWN] has the floor. 

E...~ROLLED BILL SIGNED. 

A message from the House of Representatives, by Mr. CLARK, its 

Clerk, announced that the Speaker of the House had signed the enrolled 

bill ( S. 602) to legalize the election of the Territorial Legislative Assembly of Wyoming, and the presiding officer announced the signature of 

the President pro tempore thereto. 

COIN DUTIES ON IMPORTED GOODS. 

Ur. BROWN. I ask unanimous consent to take up the resolution 

submitted by the Senator from Kentucky [Mr. BECK] on the silver 

question with a view of submitting some remarks upon it. 

The PRESIDING OFFICER. Unanimous consent is granted, the 

Chair hearing no objection. · 

The Senate resumed the consideration of the resolution submitted 

December 18, 1885, by Mr. BECK, relatiYe to the payment of customs 

dues and the disbursements thereof, &c. 

Mr. BROWN. Mr. President, the silver question is in no sense a 

party question. Many of the leading Democrats both in and out of 

Congress differ with the President, Secretary of the Treasury, and other 

Democratic leaders upon this question. 1\-Iany of the most distinguished and intelligent leaders of the Republican party agree with the 

President and Secretary of the Treasury. But a large number of Republican leaders equa-lly as distinguished differ with their party friends 

on this question, and believe that the coinage of silver should be con- tinued, at least to the extent now prescribed by law, while some think 

the annual coinage should be increased to a higher figure. No Senator 

or Representative, no matter which side he takes of this important 

question, can be charged with a want of fealty to his party on account 

of his position. I have no hesitation in expressing my deliberate and 

fixed opinion that it would be unwise and unjust to the people of this 

country to discontinue the coinage of silver at present or to lessen the 

amount annually coined under the present law. 

An intelligent writer has lately made the statement that the national 

public debts of the civilized world, embracing mainly the public debts 

of Europe and America, amountin round numbers to$25,000,000,000. 

Upon this enormous sum the people are paying more than an average 

of 4 per cent., or $1,000,000,000 per annum of interest. The san1e writer 

is of opinion that all the state and county and corporation debts ofthe 

world aggregate about $50,000,000,000, making the indebtedness of the 

world, national, state, arid corporate, amount to $75,000,000,000, which 

• 

at 4 per cent. would be three billions a year of interest, with which the 

labor of the people is now taxed, an annual interest of twice the amount 

of the whole public debt of the United States. 

The holders of this immense amount of bonds and other obligations 

forw a class, and the laboring people of the world who are wealth-producing and who labor to pay this enormous amount annually form 

another class. Theyareveryproperlydesignated thecreditorclass and 

the debtor class. It is the interest of the creditor class, holding this 

immense amount of bonds and liens upon the labor of the people, to 

have both the principal and interest paid in the most valuable currency 

whicli it is in their power to receive from the debtor class. 

These bonds and other obligations, so far as this country is concerned, 

were contracted to be paid in a fixed currency, specified and defined in 

the contract. Most of the debt was contracted during the war, and it 

was agreed between the debtor and t1te creditor as to the larger part of 

it that the debt should be paid in the lawful money of the United 

States, or greenback."!, which were then the lawful money and currency 

of the country, and, in fuct, almost our only currency; and during a not 

inconsiderable proportion of the time one dollar in silver was worth 

two dollars and a half in greenbacks. 

A farmer furnishing bacon to the Army worth: $100 in silver Tecei ved 

$250 in greenbacks, or a bond of the Government for $250. In other 

words, he received in a bond of the United States two and a half times 

asmuch ashisbaconwould have broughtinsilver. Thesamewastrue 

of the manufacturer, the merchant, and all other classes who furnished 

supplies to the Army of the United States. Thus the matter stood at 

the end of the war. The bondholders during all the period while greenbacks were so heavily depreciated got two or two and a half times as 

much in bonds for the articles delivered by them to the Government as 

they would have brought in gold or silver. In that state of the case 

what peculiar obligation rested upon the Government of the United 

States to pay these bonds in a better currency than was provided for 

any other creditor of the United States? 

What peculiar claim did the bondholder, who obtained his bonds 

during this state of inflation and got this large increase upon the gold 

or silver value of his commodities, have to be paid in better currency 

than the balance of manlrind who ooght be creditors of the United 

States? ·Why should he receive in payment a better currency than the 

Army or the Navy or the clerks in the Departments or the day laborer 

who toils upon the public works of the United States? I can see no 

reason whatever why the discrinlination should have been made in his 

favor. The soldiers who imperiled their lives in the storm of battle 

received their wages in greenbacks. Their widows and minor children, 

where the husbands and fathers were slain in battle, received their 

pensions in greenbacks, and I believe they still do. All the officers 

and employes of the Government received their compensation in greenbacks, and I believe they still do. The men who toiled upon the new 

vessels of the Navy, as well as the men who labored during the extremes of heat and cold in the improvement of your rivers and harbors, 

received their pay in greenbacks~ and they still do. What greater 

equity existed in favor of the bondholder than existed in fayor of either 

of the classes to which I have referred? If there were any I am not 

aware of it. 

But the association of bondholders, on account of the large increase 

that had been paid them above the gold and silver standard, had an 

enormous amount of our securities in their hands. The debt amounted 

to 2, 756,000,000 at the end of the war, and w bile a portion of this debt was owned by every class in the community, the great bulk of it belonged to a comparatively small class of capitalists, who were able, when 

a United States bond for $250 could be obtained for commodities worth 

$100 in silver, to advance the amount and take the bond. This creditor 

class, holding this large amount of bonds of the United States acquired 

under circumstances most favorable to their own interests, naturally 

desired to increase the value of the obligations held by them, and they 

went to work, systematically I have no doubt, and used the columns 

of influential newspapers and the brains of influential men, and they 

finally had the pleasure to see the passage of the act of 1869, declaring 

that the principal of the bonds as well as the interest should be paid 

in coin. There was an exception in this act, applicable to a certain 

class of bonds, but the exception was so qualified as to destroy its effect 

and -leave the rule substantially as above stated. 

There was no new consideration for this important alteration in the 

contract so far as the then bondholders were concerned. Many of . 

them got their bonds when the legal money of the United States, greenbacks, was so depreciated that the bonds only cost them about 40 cents 

in the dollar in gold or silver, and the contract between them and the 

people was that the bonds might be paid in the same currency they 

gave for thein, to wit, in greenbacks, or in lawful money, as it was 

called. Instead of carrying out this contract Congress gratified them 

by the passage of the act above mentioned, by which it declared that 

they should receivepaymentincoin; that is, ingold or silver. But they were not content with this, and they soon had the pleasure to see the 

passage of another act, which is dated 14th of July, 1870, authorizing 

the refunding of the bonds, and prescribing that the new bonds should 

be paid in coin of the standard value presc1·ibed by law at the date of 

the passage of this act . 
1886. CONGRESSIONAL -RECORD-SENATE. 649 

The gold dollar then consisted of 25.8 grains of standard gold and 

the silver dollar of 412.5 grains of standard silver. 

But let it be borne in mind that while theywere procuring this legislation greatly enhancing the value of their securities, they did agree 

to receive payment in the coin of the United States of the standard of 

that date. In other words, they agreed to receive payment in silver 

dollars or gold dollars of the standard weight which the law then au- thorized and of the standard weight which it now authorizes, as neither 

the weigh-t of the silver nor the gold dollar has been changed by law 

since that time. 

Now, we would naturally enough conclude that this system of changing the contract from time to time, at each change making it more valuable to the creditor party, had been carried far enough, and that the 

people wota.ld not be asked to do more than pay an original greenback 

debt worth 40 cents in the dollar in the gold and silver coin of the 

standard of 1870 or the gold and silver coin of the present date. But 

not content with the advantages they had obtained over the people, the · next step was that of demonetizing silver. What would have been the 

effect if silver could have been permanently demonetized, and the coinage of the standard silver dollar discontinued, and the guarantee given 

that nothing but gold should be received in payment of the public debt? 

This would still further have enhanced the value of their bonds, as it 

would largely have diminished the quantity of the coin with which, 

under the contract, they were to be paid by striking down silver coin, 

which would have greatly increased the value of the gold coin, which 

would have then been the only coin we could have had to give them in 

payment. This would have added probably from 25 to 50 per cent. to 

the value of their bonds, and it would have enhanced the burdens of 

the people out of whose labor they must be paid a like amount. 

But after the act demonetizingsilverhadgoneinto effect, the people, 

who felt that they had already been greatly wronged, determined to 

take the matter into their own hands, and they sent representatives to 

Congress to repeal the act demonetizing sil-.er and provide for a reason- able amount of annual coinage, and a very moderate amount under the 

circumstances. AB the people since that period, at ea~h biennial election, have selected members of Congress who could not be charmed by 

the seductive influence of this great creditor class, it became necessary 

in their estimation, notwithstanding their frequent £'1ilures, for the . CI'editor class to continue their efforts to procure legislation to discontinue the coinage of silver. They have failed to procure legislation to 

stop the coinage of silver. But notwithstanding this failure, they have 

still been so fortunate, while others have been compelled to take silver 

or gi.'eenbacks, as to continue to receive gold alone in payment of both 

the principal and interest which have fallen due, and up to this date, 

if I am correctly informed, there has not in any instance been a silver 

dollar paid to a Federal bondholder for years past, if indeed there has 

been any instance since the passage of the act of 1870. What has been 

the result? . · 

A 6 per cent. United States bond during the war v.·as worth, s:ty, 40 

cents in the dollar in gold or silver. Upon the passage of the act of 1869 

they rosenearlytopar. Upon the passageoftheactof 1870 a4percent. 

went to a par, and since that, as the interest and principal falling due 

from year to year have been paid in gold only while all the other 

creditors of the United States are required to take silver or greenbacks, 

the bonds have steadily advanced, until they are now worth 120 to 124 

in the market, and still the cry is that the patriotic bondholders must 

be dealt liberally with, and that the taxes of the people must be increased to give them a better cmTency than other people receive, so as to keep up the credit of the United Stat-es. 

I think it proper that we keep the credit up to a point that is rea- eonable. When a 3 per cent. bond is at par, I do not care to tax the 

people to put the credit any higher. If, with the surplus in the Treasury from year to year, we have to purchase the 4 percents to keep up 

the sinking fund, I do not desire that the people who sold them for 40 

to 50 cents in the dollar pay 120 to 130 for them. 

There is neither reason nor justice in the demand that wo depi"eciate 

part of the currency of the United States, namely, greenbacks 2.nd silver, 

in order to make gold more valuable, and pay the bondholders n. more exorbitant price. 

I think that every officer of the Treasury who has to pay· out money on the public debt or public expenditures of every character should 

treat all creditors alike, and should pay to the bondholder for his interest or his maturing bond either gold or silver, as the one or the 

other may be most convenient for the Treasurer at the time; and bear 

in mind, Mr. President, if you pay out twenty or thirty or forty millions 

of dollars a year in silver to the public creditors, who are a very influential and powerful class, you make it their interest to aid in keeping 

up the price of silver, while if you pay them in gold alone, they will 

be always attempting to depreciate silver to make the gold received by 

them more valuable as therepresentativeofmoreproperty. I say, treat 

every creditor alike. If you pay the bondholder in gold alone, pay gold 

to the officer, pay gold to the laborer, and if there is really any difference in the purchasing power of the gold and silver dollar, there is 

greater reason why the bondholder, in view of the original cost of the 

bond, should take the silver dollar than there is why the laborer should 

take it and leave the gold dollar to the bondholder. 

There is a great clamor on the part of the bondholders for a suspension of the coinage of silver and much apprehension on ~ccount of the 

large amount of silver dollars lying in the Treasury vaults. Now, I 

sayitis the duty of the Secretary of the Treasury to dispose of those silver 

dollars by paying them out to the public creditors whenever anything 

is due, and the bondholder should take his full share of them. If this 

does not dispose of them, then the Secretary of the Treasury should 

call in enough bonds upon which the people are now paying interest 

to absorb the silver dollars that are lying in the Treasury, and thus 

relieve the people of a large amount of interest which they are paying 

annually upon the portion of the debt that is subject to call and is not 

called in, and pay off the debt to all classes of creditors as far as we have silver coin not otherwise appropriated. If it is said this is pot 

honest, a.~ it is not an honest dollar, I reply that it is always honest to 

pay a debt in the very currency which the creditor by the contract 

has agreed to take. The contract in this case, as amended at the instance of the creditors, is that every one of these bonds may be paid 

in silver dollars or gold dollars at the convenience of the Treasury, 

and no American need blush when the Government carries out in 

honest, strict, good faith its contract with its creditors, and pays them 

in the very currency which the creditors have contracted to take. 

The money received into the Treasury from customs on imported 

goods is, under the law, to be collected in coin, and is by act of Congress first specially set apart for the payment of the interest on the 

public debt. The contract with the bondholders, then, is to take the 

coin of the United States, either gold or silver. The Mt of Congress 

requires the coin thv,t is received for duties on imports to be set apart 

for the payment of the interest upon the public debt. 

A large portion of the customs is paid in silver coin, and yet not a dollar of this coin, which is the currency agreed on by the parties to 

the contract, and which is specially setapart by act of Congress to that 

use, is paid to a single bondholder. The silver dollars are reserved for 

the people, the laborers, the debt-paying class; the gold dollars are re- served for the bondholde1'S, who are the creditor class. And as the 

gold goes alone to the most powerful creditor class, all the immense 

power and ·influence of that class are constantly brought to bear to de--

preciate the value of silver, in which the people are paid, and enhance 

the value of gold, in which the bondholders are paid. This is neither 

fair dealing nor common honesty. 

This is a subject upon which the people should be aroused, and they 

should require their representatives, no matter in what department of 

the Government, to see to it that this law is executed and the contract 

of the Government with the bondholders complied with, and that any 

surplus silver dollars of the standard of 1870 which the Treasury may 

at any time possess be paid to the bondholders and other creditors, so 

as to stop interest and to that extent reduce the burdens of the people. The Secret.'U'J of the Treasury tells us in his report that the esti- ·mated amount of gold and silver coin in the United States on the 30th 

of June, 1885, was $820,000,000, $542,000,000 of which consisted of 

gold coin and $278,000,000 of silver coin. 

According to this estimate there are nearly twice as many gold dollars as there are silver dollars in the United States, or, in other words 

there is a little ever one-tbird of the coin in the United States silver, 

and nearly two-thirds gold. The bondholders then may well struggle 

to demonetize silver and make gold the only standard, as it would 

greatly reduce the amount of the circulating medium aR.d greatly en.:. hance the value of their bonds on account of the increased amount of 

property which would be required to make payment. · But we are told that it is neeessary to stop tl;le coinage of silver to 

prevent the exportation of our gold to foreign countries and the importation of a large amount of silver which would form an inferior cu:r- rency for this country. This note of warning has constantly been given 

by bankers and bondholders ever since the passage of the act of 1878 

remonetizing silver, which aet directs the coinage of not less than two 

millions per month oflegal-tender silver dollars; but the prophecy with 

which we have been constantly haunted has not in a single instance 

been fnliilled. - Take the whole period of the time since the passage of 

the act of 1878, and t.he result has been the very reverse of what was so often predicted by Treasury officials and bondholders. 

From year to year, almost without exception, we have imported more gold than we have exported and we have exported more silver than we have imported, and all the reasonable probabilities are that we shall 

continue to do so. And bear in mind that at the end of seven years we have twice as much gold as silver coin in our country. We have a. country of unparalleled capacity, of immense proportions, with more virgin soil and more productive capability than any other country on 

the face of the globe . . We have a population of nearly 60,000,000 of 

people, with more inventive genius, more energetic industry and enterprise, than the people of any other nation. We produce by our factories a very large proportion of the manufa~tured articles necessary for our 

use. These advantages enable us to export more and import less of the 

necessaries and conveniences of life than any other people. 

The result is a constant balance of trade in our favor, with a strong 

probability, with our increasing capacity for production and our increasingpopulationand our constantly increasing independence of other 

nations, that this balance of trade in our favor will continue to grow in-

• 
• 

650 CONGRESSIONAL . RECORD-SENATE. JANUARY 14, 

stead of being diminished. Already within the last six or seven years 

it bas amounted to over 500,000,000, which other nations have been 

obliged to paytothe United States as balance due on settlements; and as gold is the medium of exchange which is adopted in settlements between us and European nations, this pours a steady stream of gold into 

the United States, and while the production of silver from our mines 

the last year has been greater than the production of gold, still the 

quantity of gold coin in the United States almost doubles the quantity 

of silver coin, according to the extract which I have already read from 

the report of the Secretary of the Treasury. This shows that our country is being enriched by the importation of gold, and that we do not :find 

it necessary to export gold to settle the balance_ of trade against us, as it 

does not exist to any extent with European nations. Why, then, should we fear a drain of gold and an influx of silver? All the probabilities 

are that there will be an increased influx of gold and export of silver. 

In a monetary conference held in Paris in 1881 the distinguished :financier Mr. Broach, the delegate frOm Norway, a country that has adopted 

gold monometallism, made the following important statement during 

the discussion: 

In short, universal bimetallism is not possible, for, in Asia, India and China are silver monometallic, and in Europe two of the chief powers are resolved on remaining gold monometallic. 

Again he says : 

T11e United States might put up with the system, because in the capacity of 

large exporters of mer<,:handise payable in bills on London, they a.re sure of 

always keeping large quantities of gold. They could do so also because they would not be expo ed to eeing silver flow to them. They are too great pro- ducers of silver for Europe to Aend to them that metal which they furnish on the 

contrary to Europe. Thetimeisapproaching,moreover,when the United States, 

rnfftcienUy provided with coin, will no longer have to ask Europe for it, and when 

in payment of their consignments of breadstuffs and raw materials to the old 

continent they will have to demand an exchange of greater and greater quantity 

of manufactured articles or of European securities. But on either hypothesis they will be no resource for Europe for the sale of its depreciated silver. 

But it is said that we have already more silver dollars coined and 

J.a.id away in the Treasury than we can get into circulation. As long 

as the officers of this Government refuse to obey the laws passed by the 

Congress of the United States and refuse to pay silver coin to the creditors in payment of debts where they have expressly agreed to take silver we may have some surplus silver lying in the Treasury, but let it 

be paid out in honest satisfaction of our debts where the creditor has 

agreed toreceiveitand wewillsoon beridofthislargesurplus. Again, 

let the law be faithfully c.:1.rried out, and let silver certifi~tes be issued 

for the silver lying in the vaults of the Treasury, and let them be put 

into circulation, and there can be no better currency. The holder of 

each certificate then has the faith of the Government pledged to him 

that the silver lies in the vaults of the Treasury to pay the certificate 

at any moment when it is presented. The business of the country re- quires more circulation, and every surplus silver dollar and every sur- plus gold dollar that is lying in the Treasury vaults idle, not part of 

the neces...c;;ary reserve, should be put into circulation by a silver or a gold 

certificate. 

We are told that we may carry two hundred and fifteen million of sil- ver dollars, which we- have coined and which are now in this country, 

but that if we continue to coin silver we will soon be overrun by the 

quantity. rfhe greater danger is, if we encourage the contraction of cur- renc_y to a point below what is needed by the great business interests 

we will produce stringency, and even panic, throwing large classes out 

of employment, and producing general depression and demoralization 

in the different pursuits of life. 

Now, I have no hesitation in saying that if we had $~00,000,000 

more of silver coin thrown by its representative, the silver certificate, 

into circulation the business of the country would be immensely improved. 

If we stop the coinage of silver we contract the currency at least 

$28,000,000 per annum. That amount is annually coined into silver 

dollars and put into circulation. That amount will be withheld from 

circulation each year while we fail to coin the $28,000,000. In other 

words, out of the silver of the country $28,000,000 are made each year 

and thrown into circulation, which would not go into circulation if the 

coinage were suspended, and to that extent depression of business would 

follow. · It is said that the national banks are contracting their circulation on account of the redemption of the 3 per cent. bonds upon which they are 

banking, and that we may look for a contraction of from $20,000,000 to 

$30,000,000 per annum on that account. If so, and we add to that 

$28,000,000 annually of silver coin withheld, we shall produce a state 

of stringency in this country that may be very beneficial to the large 

creditor class, but very detrimental to the debtor class. But can we 

manage ad.ditional silver dollars in this country as currency with full 

legal-tender quality without detriment to our business? 

We have :fifteen to twenty millions more of population than either 

France or Germany. · Our territory is several times as large as the territory of both these governments put together. We outstrip them in 

enterprise, industry, and production. We need more local circulating 

medium than both of them together. We are told that both these na- tions have stopped the coinage of silver, and that is given as a reason why we should do so. 

We are told by the Secretary of the Treasury that Germany has four 

to five hundred millions of silver marks: in thalers, of unlimited legal 

tender, and that France has six hundred millions of five-franc silver 

pieces of unlimited legal tender, while we have but two hundred and 

fifteen millions of legal-tender silver dollars. In other words, France 

and Germany have three times as much ·legal-tender silver coin as we have. We certainly have need of as much as they can carry. We hear 

of no panic in the money market there, no selling of gold at a premium, 

and no difficulty about legal-tender silver coins answering all the purposes of money. We c.:m then very safely, to meet the demands of our immense business, coin four hundred millions more than we have at 

present, and we will then have less legal-tendel' silver coin than they 

have in France and Germany, and little more than France alone. If 

they can carry it without difficulty, why may not we do likewise? 

The United States is probably the heaviest producer of silver in the 

world. The United States and Mexico together produce about ~nehalf of all the silver mined in the world. Why, then, should either of 

these nations array itself on the side of the powers that seek to demonetize silver and destroy its value? 

From the earliest ages of civilization silver and gold have been the 

metals used for the coinage of the money of the world. In all ages 

they have been mentioned alike a,s money, and the quantity of each in 

circulation has been nearly equal. The Secretary of the Treasury informs us in his report tha:t the "statisticians all agree that silver is 

54 per cent. of the monetary metals of mankind, while gold is but 46.'' 

While we have of gold about 65 per cent. and of silver about 35, then, 

if we were to strike down silver as money and all other nations were to 

follow our example, we would destroy more than one-half of an the 

money in the world, and more than one-third of our own metallic 

money, and would reduce property to one-half its present nominal 

value, and it would cost the debtor class twice as much property to pay 

their debts-as it now costs when both the metals are coined and used as money. 

Now, while it is admitted that 54 per cent. of the metallic money of 

the world is silver, it is sought to stop the coinage of that metal because 

it is said its market value is not at present the equal of our gold unit; 

in other words, that 412.5 grains of standard silver is not worth in the 

market a standard gold dollar, which is the unit of the United States. 

Why is it that silver, which down to the period of the commencement 

of the war, at 16 for 1, was worth a premium as compared with the gold. 

coin, has since fallen until the metal is not worth more than 80 cents 

in the dollar? This has resulted not from a superabundance of silver, 

but from the unfriendly legislation of Great Britain, Germany, and 

the United States. If the principal commercial nations of the world 

will discontinue the coinage of gold as money it will decrease in value 

faster than silver has done, as it is a metalnotsowell suited for use in 

the mechanic arts andforvariousdomesticpurposesassilver. The su- periority in value that it now has over silver is entirely artificial. It 

is produced by unfriendly legislation against silver and partial legislation in favor of gold. Let the case be reversed, and permit the unlimited 

coinage of silver and stop the coinage of gold into legal-tender money, as they have done in India, and silver will very soon reassert itself, and 

412.5 grains of standard silver will again become worth more money in 

the market than 25.8 grains of gold . I have heard it stated that thenecessityforsuspending the coinage of 

silver grew out of the fact of the enormous increase of silver from the 

mines in our own country and Mexico and other parts of the world, 

making a. great disproportion in quantity in favor of silver. In other 

words, that the metaJ had become too plentiful to be coined into money 

without restraint. Now, to show the fallacy of this position, I again re- fer to the report of the Secretary of the Treasury. He says "gold from the 

mines of all the world has doubled in quantity within thirty-five years, 

silver about doubling in the last one hundred years," so that in fact the 

production of gold at the mines has shown an increase much more rapid 

than that of silver, and iftherewere cause for alarm on account of the 

too great inr.rease in the quantity of one of the metals it existed in the case of gold and not of silver. While gold doubles in thirty-five years, 

silver doubles in about one hundred years. Gold therefore doubles, if 

the SecretaryoftbeTreasnry be right, in aboutone-thirdofthe time it 

takes silver to double. If I were to adopt the line of argument of the 

other side this would be a strong argument in favor of suspending the 

unlimited coinage of gold, because that metal is becoming too plentiful 

to be coined without restraint. 

But as I stated on a former occasion, overproduction of neither gold nor silver is the difficulty. The world is making rapid strides in developing new enterprises every year. Commerce has received an impetus from the discoveries made in the arts and sciences, in steam and 

electricity, within the last half century which has no parallel and no 

approximation to a parallel in all the history of the past. The different 

nations of the world are being thrown together as near neiglibors, space 

is being annihilated, and the human race is becoming more intimately 

associated as one people. There has been a rapid advancement b. agl'iculture, in all the mechanic arts, in railroading, ship-building, in transportation on land and sea., in manufactures and commerce, requiring a greatly increased quantity of money for a circulating medium to do the 

business, and instead of an overproduction of the precious metals, the 
1886. CONGRESSIONAL RECORD-SENATE. 651 

great increase in the demand and the yearly waste or loss from use taken into the account the present production is not adequate to the 

real wants of mankind. This is further demonstrated by the extensive use of a. paper circulation not predicated upon a. solid specie basis, 

which several of the great powers are compelled to adopt for want of 

sufficient metallic currency. 

The truth is the growing manufactures, agriculture, and the mechanic 

arts, and other great interests of the world are increasing so rapidly that 

it requires all the gold and silver that is produced by the mines to keep 

mankind supplied with such quantity of the precious metals coined into 

money as is really necessary for the regulation of our business exchanges 

and for the well-being of society. 

We are told that Great Britain many years ago demonetized silver and 

made gold alone the standard of values, and that while Great Britain 

continues to pursue that policy other commercial nations are obliged to 

follow. While Great Britain makes gold the standard, she uses in her 

island home an immense amount of silver, which is received in a large 

class of the transactions of life as money. But why was Great Britain 

prompted to this course? Thepeopleofthatcountryhad a?c:runulated 

immense wealth, and the Government had reached the position where 

it was the representative of the greatest creditor nation on earth. 

As almost the whole world was indebted to Great Britain, any line 

of policy which made a dollar in money the representative of a. larger 

amount of property, and which caused it to take· more property of the 

debtor to satisfy the demand of the creditor than it would have taken 

before, was beneficial to Great Britain. 

By striking down one of the metals-and she selected silver for that 

purpose-and refusing to receive in payment anything but gpld, she increased the purchasing value of the pound sterling, and thereby increased the amount of property necessary to pay the debt of the pound 

sterling due to her; just as the bondholders, if they can strike down sil- ver in this country, increase the value of their bonds by increasing the 

amount of property necessary to pay the bonds. 

But thefactthat Great Britain demonetized silver did not make it 

necessary for even her nearest neighbors to follow her example. Gold 

is the legal tender that Great Britain now permits to be coined, but Fra"t~-ce, her neighbor just across the channel, while she is not nowcoining silTer, carries,sa.y, $600,000,000 in silver coin, which is all full legal 

tender, and she gets along with her exchanges and purchases and sales 

as well asGreatBrita.in does with hers. ~then, France under the circumstances can carry $600,000,000, why should we not be abletoearry 

$1,000,000,000 of legal-tender silver coin? There is certainly no good reason why we may not carry a much larger sum than France can carry. 

But Great Britain is not very consistent in her course in demonetizing silver and making gold the standard. While she adopts that policy 

in her home government, she adopts exactly the reverse of it in her 

immense possessions in India. There gold is demonetized and silver 

is the legal tender. By this policy Great Britain is enabled to draw 

the gold into the exchanges of the home government and to put off 

any quantity of surplus·silver that she may have on her possessions in 

India. And having there 200,000, 000 of subjects, she has an immense 

vent for all the silver that she may be able to control This is a. shrewd 

piece of financiering. Atone end of the line goldis the legal money, 

at the other end silver alone is the legal money. At one end gold is 

demonetized, at the other end silver is domonetized. While we have 

not a. country with the immense population of India to absorb and use our silver, we have a countryofmuch greater extent and with a population more productive than the whole of India to use the. silver which 

is annually taken from our mines, even if a. much larger proportion of 

it were converted into coin. 

As I have already stated, we are in no danger of having our gold 

drained out of this countryandsilverimported to take its place as long as the balance of trade remains in our favor as between us and the principal European nations. As two of the chief powers of Europe coin 

gold as their legal tender, and as commercial settlements are made in 

gold, we get the benefit of it, and our stock of gold is constantly increased by a drain from those nations into •this country to settle bal- ances in our favor. 

But there is another view of this subject in favor of silver to which 

I wish to refer in this connection. It is a. well-known fact that silver 

is the principal money or medium of exchange used in China, British 

India, Japan, and in fact all the other Eastern nations. More than 

two-thirds of the people of the globe prefer it to gold and use it chiefly as their money. South America is a large producer of both gold and 

silver; so is Mexico. But there the silver dollar is still recognized and 

used as a circulating medium, as legal money, and there is no discrimination against it. 

As we are fast becoming a vast manufacturing power, as well as a great agricultural power, with a large surplus of the products of our different manufacturing establishments for exportation, we look chiefly 

to Chi.na. and other Eastern nations and to South America as the markets where we can most successfully compete with England and France 

and other commercial powers, but especially with the former. There 

is a very large balance of trade against us in Brazil and the West Indies, principally for sugar and coffee. Both these countries use silver 

as legal money. In paying that large balance of trade in specie why 

should we send our gold out of the country if we prefer to keep it when 

they would as readily accept silver? Why not send them silver in payment of these balances? 

The same remark applies to the Hawaiian Islands, where our purchases of sugar turn the balance of trade against us. Why not maintain our silver standard and our silver coins and pay these balances in 

silver or gold, as it suits our convenience, and why not send our silver 

to China and other Eastern nations to exchange for their commodities, 

as there, too, the balance of trade is against us ? As the nations which owe us large balances must settle with us in gold and the U?-tions to 

whom we owe balances are willing to take silver, and as that state of 

things is likely to continue for many years to come, the successive reports of the Treasury Department which come to Congress annually, 

predicting great financial trouble by the draining of' our gold out of the 

country and the filling its place with silver, no longer produce uneasiness, as they are found to have no pra-ctical significance. 

In the report ofHon. JOHN SHERMAN, then Secretary ~fthe Treasury, now the able and honored President pro te-mpore of the Senate, dated 

December 2, 1878, very soon ~er the act was passetl remonetizing 

silver, we find at the conclusion of an argument on this questio~ the 

following sentence: 

It would therefore seem to be the best policy, for the present, to limit the 

aggregate issue of our silver dollars, based on the ratio of 16 to 1, to such amount as can clearly be maintained at par with gold, until the price of silver in the 

market shall assume definite ratio to gold, when that ratio should be adopted and our coins made to conform to it; and the Secretary respectfully recom- mends that he be authorized to discontinue the coinage of the silver dollar 

when the amount outstanding shall exceed $>0,000,000. 

From this it is very clear that the honorable SecretarY-did not think we could carry at par more than $50,000,000 in silver, ~d that we should 

limit the aggregate issue to such sum as could be clearly maintained at 

par with gold, and the sum of $50,000,000 was fixed as the amount the 

Secretary thought we could manage. Instead of fifty millions of legaltender silver dollars we now have two hundred and fifteen millions, 

according to the report of the present Secretary of the Treasury, and 

still the sil.ver dollar is maintained at par with the gold dollar. If the 

suggestion of the Secretary of the Treasury in 1878 had been adopted, 

we would have withdrawn, or rather withheld, from circulation the 

$165,000,000 in silver which we now have either in the Treasury ready 

to go into circulation or in actual circulation. If that amount were 

now withdrawn from the currency, it would produce stringency and 

financial pressure of a fearful character. 

In the report of the Secretary of the Treasury in 1881, three years 

later than the report above referred to and four years ago, we find the 

following admonition: 

A continous monthly addition to our silver coinage will soon leave us no choice but that of exclusive silver coinage, and tend to reduce us to a place in 

the commercial world among the minor and less civilized nations. It may be assumed that a people as enterprising and progressive as that of the United 

States, holding a leading position among the nations, will not consent to a total 

abandonment of the use of gold a.s one of the metals to be employed as money, and we can not be placed in the awkward position of paying for all that we buy 

abroad upon a gold standard and selling all we have to sell upon a silver standard. It is therefore recommended that the provision for the coinage of a fixed amount each month be repealed., and the Secretary be authorized to coin only so much as will be necessary to supply the demand. 

Since that recommendation we have coined over one hundred million 

silver dollars, and we now have twice as many gold as silver dollars. 

Something similar to the above has appeared, I believe, in every annual 

report of the Secretary of the Treasury since the remonetization of silver. But these doleful forebodings have proved very harmless, as none of the evils predicted have befallen the country. We are carrying two 

hundred and fifteen millions of silver dollars, and not fifty millions, at 

par with gold. We still use gold as a currency and have nearly twice as much of it as we have of silver, and we have not been reduced to a place in the commercial world among the minor and less civilized na- tions, nor have we been placed in the awkward position of paying for 

all that we buy upon a gold standard and selling all that we have to sell 

upon a silver standard. 

. These annual predictions of imminent danger have ceased to alarm any one who is at all familiar with our commerce, our exchanges, and our 

currency. Bankers and bondholders who are largely interested in striking down silver and maintaining a gold standard anly prognosticate great 

calamity if the coinage ofsilverbenot suspended. Bntthepeople, the 

labori..Iig class, the wealth-producing class, the debt-paying class, and the 

commercial class, whoarenot bondholders or bankers, see no difficulty 

in continuing the present coinage of silver under the law now of force. 

But we are told that the legal-tender silver dollar is not intrinsically 

worth as much as the legal-tender gold dollar, and that the inferior cur- rency is always put into circulation, and where there are two currencies 

unequal in value the more valuable is always retired and the less valuable goes into circulation; or, as it has been expressed in more historic 

language, that "bad money drives out good nioney, but good money 

can not drive out bad money." "In other words, the relatively cheaper 

medium of exchange will be retained in circulation and the relatively 

dearer one will disappear." 

Now, Mr. President, you ~please bear in mind the fact that we are constantly reminded that the Treasury Department can not get the 

legal-tender silver dollars into general circulatiQD, though the Treasury 
652 CONGRESSIONAL RECORD-SENATE. . JANUARY 14,· 

Departm.ent bas the P?Wer to pay out the legal-tender silver as long as there 1s a dollar of 1t. But we are told from year to year that it is 

impossible to get it into circulation, and still we are told it is inferior 

to gold. What then becomes of the rule that" bad money drives out 

good money, but that good money can not drive out bad money." If 

the silver dollar is the inferior currency which the advocates of a sus- pension of coinage tell us it is, why does it not drive out gold from 

circulation and why does it not fill every avenue of business with its 

presence? 

It must be true either that the silver dollar is not the inferior cur- re.ncy which it is represented to be or that the rule above mentioned is 

not a sound rule, or else we must conclude that the effort at the Treasury heretofore bas been to keep it out of circulation rather than to put 

it in. To the credit of the present Secretary of the Treasury I beg to 

remark that, as I understand it, be bas greatly increased the circulation of silver since he has been in office, and I entertain so much con.fi- denc~ in his ability, his :fidelity to principle, and his patriotism that I 

have no doubt he will soon be able to put all the surplus he has on hand 

into circulation without driving out gold. Whether it be a less valuable or more valuable currency, the two can circulate together in large quantitieswithout pradical embarrassment, as the results have alrea-dy shown. 

Intrinsically there is no substantial difference between the value of 25.8 

grains of standard gold and 412.5 grains of standard silver. The apparent difference grows out of unfriendly legislation against silver and 

unjust and partial legislation in favor of gold. Hence the different Secretaries of the Treasury have been unable, as they report, to put the uG.resha~ law'.' in force, ~nd have silver, ~hich they ~y is bad money, 

gomto Clfcnlabon anddnveout gold, wbiChtbeyclalm isgoodmoney. 

The failure grows out of the fact that both are good money, and they 

circulate together, as they always have done, and neither can drive out 

the other. • It has been said repeatedly by high officials that the coinage of the sil- ver dollar does great injustice to the laboring class Qf this country; that 

the silver dollar is not an honest dollar, and that the laboring class 

should bepaidingoldfor~heirlabor. Why, then,isitnotdone? We 

pl'oba.bly have gold enough in the Treasury to pay all who la.bor for the 

United States, and it is a little remarkable that this argument should 

be advanced by those who have power topay,andrefusetopay, a dollar 

in gold to any one laboring for the United States. Those who labor for 

this Government receive pay in silver or greenbacks. Not one of them can get an honest claim of a hundred dollars for which he has labored 

paid in gold at the Treasury. The gold is kept for the bankers and the 

bondholders, and notwithstanding they have agreed as part of their 

solemn contract to take payment both of principal and interest of their 

bonds in gold or silver coin of the present standard value, not a dollar 

of silver is paid to them, but it is kept for the laboring class, and the 

gold is securely hoarded and sacredly kept until it can be paid out to 

the bondholders. 

But the laboring class are in fact as well paid for their labor as they 

have been at any previous period in the history of the country, and a legal-tender silver dollar will buy more of the necessaries of life for the 

laborer than it would have done at almost any other time. The honorable Senator from Kentuck-y [Mr. BECK], in his very able speech on this subject a few days since, demonstrated that point very clearly. 

Before the war the laboring man who received a dollar a day for his 

labor, and a large proportion of them got less, could buy eight yards 

of calico for a dollar. Now the laborer can take the dollar which he 

receives for his day's labor and buy twenty yards of calico. Then he 

could buy bacon at 14 cents a pound. Now he can buy it at 8. And so with almost all the necessaries of life. 

There is nothing, therefore, in the position that the laboring class can be damaged by the coinage of the silver dollar. The laborers are generally glad to get silver. It is popular with the laboring class everywhere, and they would be glad to have a great deal more of it in circulation. The people can not be frightened by the statement that the 

laborers will suffer when they are paid in legal-tender silver dollars. 

When you strike down silver you will depreciate property nearly one- half, and the price of labor will go down in the same proportion, and he 

who now gets a legal-tender silver dollar for his day's labor will then 

get but fifty cents in gold. How will the laborer be benefited by the 

chauge? But while the laborers will be content to receive silver dolJars, they will insist that the bondholders who have contracted for silver 

dollars shall be required totaketheirproportion in that currency. This 

is a case where equality is equity, and all that the laborers desire is that 

bondholders and laborers be placed upon the same equal platform, that 

the same equity be done to each class. With this the laborers will be 

content. To this the bondholders should be compelled by law to submit. 

If the national banks, by a system of hoarding gold or otherwise, 

attempttopracticallydemonetize silver and to force gold to a premium 

by refusing to take legal-tender silver dollars or silver certificates in 

settlement of balances or in any settlements, and if the officers who 

represent the people in the different Departments of Government at 

Washington will not take the matter in hand and enact and enforce the 

necessary laws, then the people at the recurring elections should take 

the matter in their own hands, and .:fill all the Departments with men who will apply the proper corrective, by a forfeiture of the charters of 

such banks as are abusing their privileges, or by the enactment and 

faithful execution of such other constitutional and just laws as the ex- igencies of the case and the interest of the people may require. 

1\Ir. MAXEY. Mr. President, the discussions in.January and February, 1878, of the silver question developed fully and exhaustively the 

theories of monometallism and bimetallism. The conclusions reached 

by Congress were unmistakable. A concurrent resolution · passed the 

Senate January 25, 1878, and was returned from the House four days 

afterward with a message notifying the Senate that the House had 

agreed to the same. That resolution is as follows: 

Re,solved by the &nate (the House of Repre.sentative.s concurrino therein), Thnt all the bonds of the United States issued, or authorized to be issued, under the said act-!! of Congress hereinbefore recited, are payable, principal and interest, at the option of the Government of the United Stat.es. in silver dollars, of the coinage of the United States, containing 4.12-} grains each of standard silver· and that to r~to~e to its coinage such silver coins as a legal tender in paymento'f said bonds, 

prmCJpal and interest, is not in violation of the public faith, nor in derogation of the rights of the public creditor. 

?-'he bondsreferred towere fully setout i!l the preamble. Following 

th1s came the act of February 28, 1878, to authorize the coina<Ye of the 

standard silver dollar and to restore its legal-tender character~ This act became a law notwithstanding the President's veto. Noth- ing could show more conclusively what was then the policy of the 

United States as de•eloped through the Senate and House. 

By the sec.ond section of that act the President was directed to in ite t~e governments of the countries comprising the Latin Union, and of 

such other European nations as he might deem advisable, to joiu the Unite~ States in a conference to adopt a common ratio between gold 

and Sll ver, for the purpose of establishing internationally the use of 

bimetallic-money and of securing :fixity of value between these metals. 

This invitation to a monetary conference came in by way of amendment to the original bill, and against which amendment I voted, and 

gave my reasons therefor, which appear in the RECORDofFebruary15, 

1878. I belie•ed that the policy of the United States in this regard 

should be established by Congress; and while the concurrence of other 

nations in the bimetallic system, as shown by that act to be the policy 

of the United States, would greatly sb·engthen that policy, still any 

attempt to secnrethat concurrence would prove abortive, and I added 

that- • 

Efforts have been made time and again. You might as well t.'tlk about havi11g all nations speak the same language, of having every nation use the same pound 

weight, the same yardstick, as to talk about regulating nations abouttheir coin. Every nation that has any independence of character about it hns its own standard of weights and measures, its own standard of coin, and t.he Con titu- tion of the United States contemplates that we shall coin money and regulate the value thereof.-Congressional Rec01·d, Forty·fifth Congre£~s, first session, part 

Z, pages 1089, 1090,10!)1. 

The result was as I anticipated. The international conference invited in pursuance of this act met in Paris in August, 1878. That adjourned without practical results. Another conference was held at the same place in 1881. 

1\Ir. EVARTS, one of the commissioners on behalf the United St.'l.tes at 

the conference of 1881, in referring in a speech before the conference to 

that of 1878, says: 

What conclusion, what result flowed from. it? Germnny was not represented at all. England was present in the body, but absent in the spirit. France and its group of nations occupied only an expectant attitude. The United States fotmd to their appreciations to the arguments by which they supported them, to their warni'llgs, to their fears, to their hopes, no response that, by wRy of ac- tion, or by way of assurance of action, they could carry home as a result. 

This was precisely what I anticipated, and, so anticipating, voted 

against the invitation to a conference. • The conference of 1881 was equalJy as barren of result':> as that of 

1878. Congress, with these failures in memory, will now and hereafter, 

I trust, rely exclusively upon itself as the representative of the States 

and people, and not upon foreign nations, and formulate and stand by a system which in its best judgment will promote the welfare of the 

States and people whom it represents. 

While there was in the sessions of these conferences much academic 

discussion,andhencedivergenttheories,dogmaticallyexpressed,oflittle 

practical use to plain men, still there was much of an eminently practical character, frQm pra-ctical men, skilled in the great .:financial operations of governments and great financial establishments, with practical 

knowledge of the workings of monetary systems, and this will aid in 

the present discussion. 

It was in that conference of 1878 conceded, ancl :cd questioned by 

any one, that governments having due regard to the obligation of con- tracts not only had the right, but that it was their duty, to look out 

for themselves. 

M. Leon Say, of France, the president of tho conference, said: 

France, placed in the center of this union, finds that she has collected in her hands a great quantity of silver. There are at present about nine hundred mill- ions (francs) in the vaults of the bank, and about fifteen hundred million out- side of the bank; which gives a. sum total of twenty.five hundred millons by means of which the circulation of silver may be effected in this country. It cer- tainly would not serve our purposes to withdraw legal-tender power from such amass or silver, which circulates in FrancP. as cuiTent money, and to throw it out upon the metal market as mere merchandise. Such an idea. is inadmissible. (Page 55.) 

Mr. Goschen (delegate from England) said: 

We believe th~t eilver is a monetary metal which ought to serve concurrently 
1886. CONGRESSIONAL RECORD-SENATE. 653 

with gold in the general movement of the exchanges; we see even that it is al- most the sole instrument of exchanges in half of the globe, and we shall never believe in the snppres ion of a. money with which a commerce such as that of 

the I ndi::m Empire and all of the farther East regulates itself. (Pages 56, 57.) 

General Walker (delegate from United States) said: 

The universal gold monometallism of Europe which has been recommended 

would in most countries amount simply to this: a scanty coinage of gold, held 

mainly by the banks for the settlement of international obligations, and a vastly 

preponderating circulation of debased silver.. (Page 76.) 

And further on he said: 

Su.trocation, strangulation, arc words h:::~·dl:"' too strong to express the agony 

of the industrial body when embraced in the fatal coils of a contracting moneysupply. At a time when the production of the two historical money metals, jointly, is 

diminishing, this most unfortunate occasion is-taken to throw one of them out of use as money of full value; to remit it to the uses of token-money, and to banish what of the accumulated stock of three thousand years' production can not thus be employed{ to be hoarded in the East as treasure or devoted to persono.l ornament. (Page 78.J 

:Mr. Horton (delegate from the United States) said: 

1\Jr. Feer-llerzog's sketch of the monetarv history of the United Kingdom suggested to l\Ir. Horton another observation. Mr. Feer-Herzog had said that 

from 1717 gold had become de facto the sole standard in England, and that in 1816 the law only, as it were, sanctioned what the natural course of things had 

e-stablished a century before. This was, said 1\Ir. Horton, a. version of English history which was generally accepted, but the researches which he himself had 

had occasion to make into the documents relative to the monetary hist<>ry of 

that coantry had enabled him to ascertain that it was not in 1816, as was gene- rally stated, but in 1798, that for the first time, and at a time when the double 

stand:ud wit-h the right of unlimited mintage existed in England at the legal mtio of 1 to 15.21, the Pari iament prohibited the coinage of silver money-a law nt fir.;t temporm·y (3S George ill, c. 59) and soon rendered perpetual (39 George 

III, c. 75). lt wus not, therefore, in 1816, but in 1798, that the single gold standani was sought to be and was actually de facto established in England. And 

with what success? It was well known that throughout the whole period which 

followed, from 1i98 to 1821, there was a. contraction, almost a stoppage, in the 

metallic circulation, and that the real monetary standard of Englaud was, in 

fa.ct, the bank note, inconvertible and generally depreciated. Would the notes of the Bank of England hrwe suffered this depreciation if the double standard 

had been retained? This was the quest.ion, and it must be capable of solution 

in favor of the gold standard if the example of England was to be cited in favor 

of the demonetization of silver. Now, if it was remembered that silver then 

everywhere served as money, that all the countries with which England held 

commercial relations possessed more silver money than gold money, and that ~old not only stood higher than the English ratio, but was constantly subject to the peculiar demand created by the state of war on the Continent, there wa-s good ground for believing that the monometallist law of 1798 largely contributed to the monetary confusion from which England suffered at that period. 

{Pages 86, 87.) 

Referring t~ a remark of Mr. Feer-Herzog, delegate from Switzerbud, as to the position of Alexander Hamilton, Mr. Horton said: 

He would only, inasmuch as the name pf Alexander Hamilt-on had been men- tioned, call the attention of the conference to the doctrines of that financier 

with reference to the monetary role of the two metals. Hamilton deemed it 

t>minently dangerous for the mechanism of circulation that one of the two metals should be reduced to the condition of simple merchandise, and compar- ing the advantages of an abundant circulation with the evils resulting from an insufficient circulation, he expressly pronounced in favor of the simultaneous 

employment of the two metals. He regretted that he could not at once place before the conference the very form given by that· statesman to his ideas on this 

subject in bis report on the 1\Iint, but be would look for that document and 

place an extract from it on the table of the conference. (Exhibit E, fourth ses- sion.) . . . At the time Hamilton wrote that report the question of monometallism or bimetallism had not come into being. Nobody had yet expressed the idea of depriving one or the other metal of its character as a. means of international pay- ment. The campaign again!lt silver, that campaign which commenced subsequently.,n 1798 with a. first blow struck by England at the bases of obligations1 and which was being completed in our time by the German demonetization, baa not yet opened. Hamilton, by fixing tbe relation, a measure which in his eyes had a purely local character, might not have secured his country a metallic cur- rency always composed equally of gold and silver, but his express intention was to preserve for the two metals their role of good national and international 

money; he maintained for both the right of unlimited mintage, and this was in 

its entirety a work diametrically opposed to the tendencies of the conference of 

1867, whose doctrines had been extolled by the delegate from Switzerland. (Page 

f37.) 

!.Ir. Baralis (delegate from Italy) said: 

For a long time the country of Dante and Vico had but a single ~andard, that 

of silver, which formerly enjoyed the preference and tbesuffragel' .JI econom.ists. 

Only since the beginning of this century had the double stand.u-d been introduced, and notwithstanding nil the learned works and all the speecbes of themists this system had never ceased to remain in force. (Page 88.) 

Mr. Groesbeck (delegate from the United States) said: 

I have nothing to say, bere and now, about single and double standards of 

Yalue. If we can keep nn equilibrium of value between gold and silver all na- tions will be substantially upon both metals. Gold will be as valuable as silver 

everywhere, and silver as valuable as gold, It is idle to theorize that this can not be done. We know it has been done. Throughout the entire past up to 18i3 both metals were in equal use as money, and kept together evenly enough. ·Now and then, at long intervals, the relation between them was slightly changed, but the change was easily made, and without noticeable embarrass- ment. 

The chan~e last made in Europe, fixing the relation at 1 in weight of' gold to l5k in weight of silver, st<>od the trial of more than three~uarters of a century. ln all that time the slight differences in the market value of the metals did not amount to a serious disturbance. At one time one metal may have been at a slight premium; at another time, the other, but their average value was about 

the same. It is worthy of notice that throughout the past, and up to the middle of the 

present century, it was never suggested by any writer or statesman that either 

of the metals should be generally abandoned because of the difficulty of keeping them sufficiently equalized. Thi~ is the lesson of many centuries, and, theorize as we may, what has been 

done. m the past can be done in the future; and instead of splitting hairs about 

the smgle or the double standard let us rather walk in the Hght of the experience of thousands of years. (Pages 109, llO.) 

.And on page 112 he said: 

When the Latin Union shut the doors of their mints against sil\"'er, the situation was about as follows: 

I. Nearly every one of the important silver nations had stopped using it, and were upon inconvertible paper money. Let me name some of them: Russia, 

Austria, Italy1 l?pain, France, and the United States. It was an extraordinary happening, wnich, it is to be hoped, may never occur again. 

II. Another great nation, the German Empire, was moving from the single standard of silver, of which she had a large stock, to the single standard of gold. 

III. The demand of the East for silver, which bad always been steady, con- stant, large, and even insatiable, was suddenly checked. That was another ex- traordinary happening, which I Yenture to say had ueYer occurred before and 

may not occur again for a century. IV. The increased production ofsilyer and wild stories of its probable future 

production. 

Referring to ihe movement of Germany, 1\Ir. Groesbeck said: 

2. How is it ag to Germany? She is still on ber journey from silver t.o gold. 

She started in 1871, and is not through in 1878. It has been a long, toilsome, and 

costly joumey. She began it under the most fa,·orabl~ circumstances. Her debt was very small, and she bad in her band a. large extra fund for experi- ments. Her preparations were ample. The undertaking seemed easy; it is not yet a success. Instead of being an example to be followed, we should rather 

1·egnrd the case of Germany as a warning and an admonition. (Page 113.) 

And I may add that Germany has not yet enacted the single gold 

standard, to which the people of Germany are hostile. As to the demand for silver in the East bfr. Groesback said: 

3. How about the demand of the East for silver? It is about restored. Let me say, if there is any one factor of the problem we are considering which may be relied upon, it is the regular and constant demand of the East for silver. I can imagine a glut of gold, for gold ba.o;~ no insatiable Asia. I can not imagine a permanent glut of silver. As the rivers run into the sea, and yet the sea is nofl over full, so it will be .with the flow of silver to the vast, populous, thrifty, and 

industrious East for at least another century. Tbis aQ.verse condition is also 

changed. (Page ll3.) 

Referring to the influx of gold from California, &c., in 1850, he said 

(pages 114-15): 

You all remember the great outpouring of gold from Russia, Australia, and California. It began about 1850 and came in a. great flood. Almost the entire world was then upon silver . . England with her colonies of Australia and .Canada, and two or three insignificant nations, were the only places upon gold alone. Por- tugal was yet upon silver. This flood of gold poured upon the world about 

$CJOO,OOO,OOO in the short space of six years, and the ordinary production of silver went on concurrently, and the nations seemed to beadequately supplied and in no need of this excessive production. Gold had no Asia. to take it, and had to find a place in Europe. There was great alarm. A distinguished writer recom- mended its demonetization. A few nations fled to silver for refuge; others were braver and wiser, and conspicuously France with her bimetallic system. She let 

her then precious silver flow away to Asia, and filled her reservoirs with gold. The flood subsided and what came as a dan~er remained a.s a. blessing. What if the coinage of gold had been lim1ted or suspended at that time? If; 

would have been a great error, resulting in consequences very like to those now upon us. Silver would have been uppermost, and gold, excluded from the mints, 

would for a time have been only merchandise, for which there would have been 

but a small demand. Nine hundred millions of gold in six years I -a. production 

that has had no parallel in all the past. It was welcomed, rather than rejected, and weputuponitthestamp oflaw,andmadeitmoney, and soitwassa.vedfrom 

depreciation. Seventy-five millions of silver .-can we not welcome this also, and 

put upon it the stamp oflaw, and make it money, and so save it and our own sn ver from the possible danger of further depreciation? 1\fr. President and gentlemen, if there are any causes local to yourselves why 

you can not do tbis now, I shall be sorry. It is not a. very great or a very difficult work to restore silver to its former rank and power, and it seems to me we can not do it too soon for the general good. Accept it as a certainty that the 

world will not cons:>.nt to narrow the basis of credit; the tendency is to widen 

it. How many money schemes are being constantly devised to take the place of gold and silver. They are in part an expression of discontent and unrest, 

growing out of the present derangement, and they have to me the appearance of a. warning against the discontinuance of the Use of either metal. Gold and 

silver, neither alone but both equally, have endured a trial 'of thousands of 

years, and through all the past it was never suggested that they were too abundant. 

The first suggestion of such a kindoccurredquiterecenlly,when it was recom- mended that gold should be demonetized because of excessive production. 

Alas I if it had been done. The second is now to demonetize silver. Alas! if it 

shall be done. It would almost as soon occur to me to strike into barrenness a part of our wheat fields, because now and then their har...-ests seemed too plen- tiful, or to desolate some of our mines of coal, iron, and other minerals, because now and then their yield seemed excessive, as to desolate any of the mines of 

gold and silver because now and then their yield happened to be abundant. The more reasonable apprehension is that they may at some time fail. On the other 

hand, population, labor, trade, commerce, and the endless activity of life will never fail but ever increase, and their demand for these metals will always utilize 

their utmost production. 

:Mr. Feer-Herzog, of Switzerland, was not only a pronounced mono- metallist, but acknowledged himself a partisan of that theory and was its special champion in the conference. 

It is true that Switzerland had the single sil\·er standard tilll860. 

Switzerland since the law of 1860, which gave legal-tender to gold and placed 

it in the first rank in circulation, bas never struck gold coins. 

.And I presume it will ma.ke but little difference if she never does. 

It is said: 

Her citizens prefer, in spite of a special law on the coinage of gold coins (December 22, 1870), to make use of the monetary establishments of Paris and Brus- sels, which are better situated geographically than the mint at Berne. (Page 

191.) 

It is, however, a matter of but little practical importance what may 

be the action of Switzerl{md, since its people control but little money 

of any kind. The Swiss delegate, while announcing himself a partisan 

of the single gold standard, clearly and unequivocally enunciated the 

principle that states in their monetary laws are controlled by their interest. 

Referring to the Latin Union and its course, he said: 

In such a case evecy state or group of states had only to consult its own con• venience; its interest alone determined its right. (Fifth session, page 116.) 
654 CONGRESSIONAL RECORD-SENATE. JANUARY 14, 

·we shoqld be controlled alone by what is the interest of the United 

Sta.tes, having dne regard always to the obligation of contracts. The 

expression of General Walker, that "it has been admitted that a doctrinaire legislation, rashly augmenting the demand for gold and diminishing that of silver, hns caused and continues to cause a most pernicious perturbation in the metals," is painfully true. · • Legislative tinkering with monetary and financial affairs has been the 

bane ofthe world during the last quarter of a. century. Undoubtedly 

all business men feel that it is no violation of honor to pay according to 

contra-ct, although in the case of an option the exercise of the option 

may greatly favor the debtor. 

In the report of the Committee on the Currency, made to the House 

of Representatives Febnmry 2, 1821, I find this: 

The Bank of the United States entered into a contract with 1\Iessrs. Baring & 

Co., of London, for the supply of $2,000,000 in specie in equal parts, as near as might be practicable, of gold and silverattheAmericanstandard. Theamount was accordingly furnished, but not a dollar of it in gold, although gold is a cur- x-ency of Great Britain and silver is admissible there as a. tender in but very small sums.-InlernationaL Monetary Report, 1878, page 556. 

· The Barings have always stood as fair as any bankers or capitalists, 

and yet they did not hesitate to avail themselves of the clause ''as near as might be practicable,'' and deli\ered wholly the cheaper money because it was to their interest; and there is not a banker or capitalist in 

the United States who would not avail himself of the. advantage of an option in a contract; still they denounce those who believe the Government should pursue that _course in payment of bonds. And in my · judgment, if the Secretary of the Treasury would pay off the bonds ns 

they full due in coin in proportion to the gold and silver coin in the 

Treasury, the effect would be to lessen the gap between gold and silver, 

and the same capitalists who now denounce silver payment would be 

its stTongest advocates, and would denounce any man as an ignoramus 

who differed with them, precisely as they first declared any man stupid 

who thouo-ht it was possible to place bonds at 3 per cent. interest, and 

afterward ·became the trongest ad \Ocates of that measure-after it had 

proven a su in spite of them, and when it was to their interest to 

have such a measure. There is no sentimentality about debt. It is a matter of contract·, aud what we need·most now is a strong, unyielding, vigorous enforcement of the contract, complying rigidly with its terms and tightening 

in the pn.yment as far as the contract justifies the burden of the taxpayer. Every coin bond of the Government is payable by its terms in 

coin of the present standard, and the Government has the undoubted ·right to pay either gold or silver coin, or partly in one and partly in the 

other, jut as may be its interest. 

States, cotmtie , cities, corporations, individuals are largely indebted. 

These obligations will be made more onerous by suspension of silver 

coinage, and this Government should not lend a helping hand to oppre....c:sion, but rather protect the citizen in his property, as well as in his 

life and liberty. 

Do not by demonetizing silver make the contract by force of law more 

burdensome than it was when it was entered into. Do not take more of a debtor's property than would have been necessary to pay his debts 

had the law let money alone as it was when he made his contracts. 

The fear that the passage of the bill remonetizing silver, so freely expr ed, would impair the credit of the Government has proven an idle 

fancy. The credit of the Government strengthened upon its passage, 

and the Government has been able to refund at the lowest rate of interest since its _passage, and without difficulty. Indeed, 150,000,000 in 

bonds were sold by the Government not long after the passage of the 

silver bill at 4per cent. per annum in asingle day, the lowestrateever 

up to that time obtained•by our Government, and the largest single 

transaction in the annals of governments, and this with a full knowledge on the part of capitalists of the resolution of January, 1878, which 

I have incorporated with these remarks, and with a full knowledge of 

the act remonetizing silver and it should not be forgotton that since 

the bond sale referred to, the Government has easily placed its bonds 

at 3 per cent. . It was claimed during the debate on the silver bill in 1878 that its 

passage would drive gold out of the country, and that the discarded 

silver of Europe would replace it. The balance of trade in our favor 

effectually checked the efilux of gold, and vast amounts of it have been 

shipped here since the passage of that act, more indeed than ever before. 

Facts like these outweigh the theories of doctrinaires, academicians, 

visionaries, speculators, and stock-gamblers. It is now claimed that 

those dire results would have happened had not the bill limited tho 

coinage of silver. The argument is entirely short. Foreign nations 

andallcapitali tsreadily saw that the limit was put onsimplybecause 

the UnitedStates believed it atthetime to be her-interest, and that the 

limit would be removed whenever this Government concluded it was to 

her interest to resume unrestricted coinage. 

It was argued during the discussion of the silver bill that as the 

United States had coined but eight million silver dollars prior to demonetization capitalists had the right to conclude, and did conclude, that 

because silver dollars of full tender had ceased to be coined debts since 

contracted were therefore to be paid in gold. This argument is without force. That it was considered by the leading nations of the earth 

without merit is manifested by the arguments of their delegates in the 

monetary conference of 1878, heretofore quoted. · 

In the international monetary conference of 1867 the same argument 

in substance was advanced by Mr. Samuel B. Ruggles, commissioner on behalf of the United States, and was mo t effectually exploded. 

At the fourth session of that conference, l'tL Parieu presiding, this 

occurred: 

1\Ir. RUGGLES. * * * The United States would not consent to accept any fixed relation between gold and silver. The double standard is abolished when 

the relation no longer exists. 

The President (M. Parieu, delegate from France) rem.inded Mr. Ruggles tha~ 

the double standard still exists in the United States, and of course the relation 

between silver and gold, which is 1 to 16. 

1\Ir. Ruggles answered that though the double standard still exists legislatively in the United States, it is virtually abolished in practice, and hence the 

United States has the gold standard alone. 

To which M. Parien replied: 

Reasoning in that way, as France coins a less number of 5-franc pieces than 

America does dollars, we might say, like Mr. Ruggle , that France has the gold 

standard alone, and that is what nobody would assert. M.Jacobi, delegate from Russia, remarked that the United States can not be 

considered as having the single gold standard any more than France, unle sa new law is passed to prohibit the coinage of silver dollars.-Appendix Illterna- tionaL Monetary Conference, 1878, page 841. 

It is perfectly clear that capitalists knew that the Government had 

the right to pay in silver. It is the law creating the double standardnot the practice of the Government in respect to coinage-that controls 

and enters into contracts. 

It has been said that investors were assured by high Treasury au- thority that the bonds would be paid in gold coin. No authority of 

that Department, high or low, ·could change Ute law or contracts under 

the law, or in law or in equity and good morals bind the Government. 

Indeed, such assurances, if ever male, which is doubtful, were quite 

gratuitous, to say the least. - The argument that but eight million silver dollars had been cOined at 

the time the great debt of the United States was contmcted, and therefore it could not have been expected that the debt would be paid in 

silver, is inconsequential. 

The total gold coinage of the United States from 1793 to and -including the fiscal year ending June 30, 1866, was $845,836,591; the debt of 

the United States at that time wns: 

Interest-bearing __ _____________ _ ------------------ $2,332,331,207 

Non-interest-bearing----------------------------- 439,969,874 

Total indebtedness------___________________ 2, 772, 301, 081 

So that if the United States had owned on that day every dollar in 

gold it ever coined, it would not have had one-third enough to pay the 

public debt. 

But the weakness of the position may be further shown in another 

way. The entire coinage of both gold and silver from 1793 to 1877 inclusive in our mints was : Gold __________________________________________ $1,035,958,675 00 

Silver------------------------------------~---- 237,163,116 90 

Total---------------------- ------------- 1,273,121,791 90 

Less than one-half the public debt, June 30, 1866. But still more. The total coinage, including minor coins, up to and including the year 

1877 was $1,286,037,189.45; so that ·every cent, gold, silver, sub idiary, nickel, and copper, coined by the Government from 1796 to 1877 

inclusive was not enough to pay one-half the public debt owing in 

1866, and if an. argument is to be drawn from lack of silver coinage 

that the debt was not to be paid in silver, a stronger argument after 

that style, which is not a good one, could be made that we did not intend to pay the debt at all; for there was not half enough coin in the 

hands of both Government and people to pay it. 

The position is absurd. The only sound position is that the Go'l'ernment has the right to pay according to the contract in the coin, gold or silver, of the standard weight and fineness fixed by law, it sees proper to select. 

Has not the Government always pursued this course? Why were gold payments made by this and all other governments after the influx 

of gold from California and Australia? Simply because gold was the 

cheaper money and it was less onerous on tbe tax-payer to pay in gold. 

Silver was at a premium as to gold. Now that the positions are re- versed is it not equally as honorable, equally nsjust, and equally sound 

policy to creditor and tax-payer alike to use the option which the Government has in the word "coin," and pay the debt in silver because it 

is less onerous on the tax-payer? . :Muchhas been said about the honest dollar. Thereis but one bon t 

dollar, white or yellow; that is the dollar of the contract. A less dollar 

is dishonest to the creditor, a larger dollar is dishonest to the tax-payer. 

If the debtor promises to pay a gold or silver dollar, whichever he 

chooses, he has the moral and legal right to pay either, just as he prefers. 

Can the people of the United States ab orb in legitimate business, 

foreign and domestic, the gold and silver which may be coined at our mints? I have no doubt of it. It is idle to compare the United States 

with European countries in the needs for money. Indeed, our sur- roundings are essentially different from theirs. Great Britian in 1801 

had a population of 16,237,300; in 1871, 31,857,388. The United States 

in 1800 had a population of 5,308,483-l than one-third thatofGrea,t 

Britian. In 1870 the United States and Territories had 37,558,371; 
1886. CONGRESSIONAL RECORD-SENATE . . 655 

in 1880, 60,000,000, and now about 65,000,000. In other words, the 

United States in 1870 had not only caught up with Great Britain, notwithsta,nding her immense advantages in the start, but passed her in 

the race, with a majority of 6, 700,983-a majority greater than the entire population of the United StateS in 1800. So of improvements of 

every kind, character, anddescription. Thecountriesofthe Old World 

are at a standStill. We are progre sive, and need more money than 

any other people, and will continue to need more until our magnificent 

count17 is fully developed. · 

During the fatal period of forced, unnatural contraction, which paralyzed e>ery industry and every step of whose pathway was marked 

by blasted hopes and ruined fortunes, the people were well-nigh su:ftocated for want of money supply. Well might Commissioner Walker, 

in his address before the conference, say: 

Suffocation, strangulation are words hardly too strong to express the agony of the industrial body when embraced in the fatal coils of a. contracting money supply. 

The indomitable energy of the p_eople, their determination to save 

more and spend less, blessed with bountiful crops, averted general and 

widespread disaster. As it was, many were brought to the verge of 

ruin, and still others were hopele lywrecked. Factories closed, forges 

grew cold, and the lan<l was :filled with tramps. .All this resulted 

mainly from (1) wild inflation, (2) sudden and too stringent contraction, 

(3) from a vicious tariff system which extorted by force of law from 

every buyer of protected articles toll to the protected. At last through 

tribulation the people reached the bed-rock of sound finance-gold and 

silver coin and paper convertible into coin on demand. Now the question presents i elf, Can the United States use profitably all the money 

coined under existing laws? Shall the law making the silver dollar a 

legal tender and requiring it to be coined at a rate not less than 

$2,000,000 nor more than 4,000,000 per month be suspended? Is it 

sound policy to suspend that law? Shall we recant the well considered policy? . My own judgment has been deliberately formed after long and patient 

iri.vestigation, and I can not yield it, it matters not who may take the opposite ground. The facts upon which a judgment is to be formed are 

as open to one man as another, and I prefer my own judgment to that 

of any man who has not carefully examined the question. Our population is now about 65,000,000, is rapidly increasing, and will so con- tinue for an indefinite period. In its development vast sums are 

needed, a large part of which goes to daily labor. We need more money 

than any other country on earth, because we are developing more rapidly. 

'That very large amounts of silver or certificates representing silver 

can be used in all tho branches of domestic inland trade and commerce, 

in railroad building, the opening of farms, in farm labor, in running 

railroads, in building, and the many industries that might be named, 

every business man knows. No complaint has come fro}D. the people 

tha.t there is too much money in circulation. No complaint against 

sil>er comes from them. The production of the precious metals is on the decrease. It does not keep pace with increase of population and 

wealth, and the constantly increasing comforts which the inventive 

genius of our people are blessing the people with. Every year more 

money is needed than the year before. We know that the vast influx 

of the precious metals which poured into Europe from Mexico and South 

America about the middle of the sixteenth century was not a curse, 

but a blessing; that it gave vitality to trade and commerce and trebled 

the price of products. We know that the $900,000,000 of gold dng from 

the mines of California and Australia bet ';"Teen 1849 and 1858 was a blessing and not a curse, although we know also that alarmists wanted, be- cause of this vast and rapid influx, to demonetize gold. We know that 

the dissemination of the coined metals among the people is a strong 

guard against the money-power when the days of contraction come. We 

know that the great body of the people are not rich, and that silver answers all the purposes of far the greater part of the inland trade and 

business of this country. We know that a dearth of money enhances 

the purchasing power of the dollar in the hands of the man fortunate 

enough to have it, and decreases correspondingly the price of the people's products and labor. All these things we know, and knowing 

them protest against discarding silver as a money metal 

The weight of silver, which is such a bugbear with some, has no ter- rors for the great body of the people 

In the South we are not grievously weighted with silver or any other 

sort of money, and if by chance any one there should become over- wf'ighted he can easily unburden himself by exchanging his coin for 

silver certificates. 

In my judgment o. vast amount of silver may be profitably used in 

every part of the United States. Certainly in the great agricultural 

West and South there will be no complaint of redundancy, and I assume 

that the transactions of the East and North are not all of colossal proportions. I presume that farmers, lawjers, doctors, merchants, mechanics, and laborers of all kinds are limited in resources there as elsewhere, and that their transactions can very easily and conveniently be · carried on with silver. 

I suppose that a large amount of silver could be.absor bed in the North 

and East as well as in the South and West, and the production of tlie 

precious metals does well if it keeps pace with the demand. 

The example of Germany in demonetizing silver is not one fit to be 

followed. There never ha.'3 been a steady financial system there. There 

is no sound reason for copying England. The British Government demonetiz.ed silver about 1798, by law extended from time to time to 1816 

and then permanently, and it was not a success, if the bankruptcy of 

~er people during the process of settling down on the present system is 

evidence; but, aside from that, England is nota producer of silver but 

a very large consumer by reason chiefly of transactions with East India, 

China, and other silver-consuming countries. She has managed to make 

London the great silver market. Being always a heavy purchaser, her 

policy is to buy silver as cheaply as she can. On our side the United 

States are producers more largely than any other country of both the 

precious metals; they are ·industries which add to the common wealth 

like wheat, corn, cotton, &c. Their production gives employment to 

many laborers and many other industries. The farmer, mechanic, man- ufacturer, common carrier, all find the mines a profitable customer. So 

far, therefore, from discouraging the production of gold and silver the 

true policy of our Government is to give them a helping hand. This 

raid upon silver is of comparatively recent origin. It is unwise, and 

if successful in reducing it to a mere article of merchandise would bo an evil immeasurable in calamity. 

The ratio ofl to 15.98, or as is commonly and with sufficient accuracy expressed, 1 to 16, should undoubtedly not be changed. There 

would have been fur more reason to give way to the alarmists who 

wanted gold demonetized because in six years $900,000,000 gold were added to the circulation of the world. The scare that developed itself 

in the international monetary conference of 1878 about Germany's 

$76,000,000 was without just foundation. It would not produce a permanent appreciable effect if it were all turned loose. There are private individuals in the United States able to buy every dollar or it, 

and should a syndicate in New. York see a frur chance to make anything by it they would buy every dollar of it in a month. Gold and 

silver have been the world's 1lloney without question as to either down 

to a recent period, and while some nations have thought it to their interest to have the single gold standard and others the single silver standard, and still others the double standard, all have recognized both as good money until lately, until the craze of reducing silver to token 

money-pocket change-seized a few dreamers, and they have unfortunately found followers in every country, and especially among tho 

common barrators of blisiness, who are a curse in every land. 

Silver is suited to every-day transactions, and the aggregate of these 

will foot up as heavily as the large transactions of the favored few who 

want only gold. 

I make no war on either gold or silver-want both, and believe the 

law should place them upon equal footing, and that the Constitution 

intended that they should be so placed; and nothing in the history of 

this country, political or financial, intimates or hints at any difference 

until this new school ofpolitical economists sprang up a few years ago. 

I regard an irredeemable paper currency asacurse toanypeople, and 

a :fluctuating currency as utterly inconsistent with healthy trade. 

With such currency no man can make any reasonable calculations for 

the future. But a sound, stable currency, based on the precious metals, 

and convertible into coin on demand, is a blessing. Such currency is 

demanded by the needs of trade and the convenience of the people, and 

when the people have fullconfidenceinits convertibility it is preferred 

as a circulating medium to gold or silver. No currency not convertible can ever command the confidence of the people. Convertible into gold or silver coin on demand, it is impossible to keep a redundancy in circulation, for whenever more of it is in circulation than is needed the 

excess will be converted into coin. The only true basis for currency is 

coin, and coin is its only regulator. Any attempt to regulate the issue 

of currency other than by coin will always prove abortive. It always 

has so proven and always will. 

It is impossible to regulate the amount of currency issued on the will 

of the Government and not convertible into coin,~or the reasons tersely 

and unanswerably stated by Mr. Clay, namely: 

First, that it is impracticable to a'Wertain, a priori, what amount can be issued without depreciation; and second, that there is no adequate security, and in the nature of things none can exist, against excessive issues. 

Gold and silver furnish the only adequate security against excessive 

issues, and both are needed. The supply of precious metals, like wheat or cotton, is obtained by labor. Whenever by reason of oversupply, 

should such a thing ever occur, their production ceases to be remu- nerative, then the labor devoted to mining would be diverted to other 

pursuits until an equilibrium between demand and supply is brought 

about; so that as these metals can only be produced by labor, their 

production is in a large degree regula tad by the universal law of trade, 

demand, and supply. And thus convertible currency rests on a sure 

foun<lation. Should ithappen thatmore currencyisincircnlation than 

is needed then the excess would be turned in and coin drawn out, and 

this coin would be sent to those partsoftheworldhavingcommodities 

more needed by coin holders than the coin. At last, therefore, gold and 

silver money, which is themoney oftheworld, as it certainly is of our 

Constitution, finds its level as surely as water. 

Whether that currency should be issued through the instrumentality 

of banks or by the Government is a question not necessarily involved in 

this discussion. :My own judgment is that the best conceivable cur-
656 CONGRESSIONAL .RECORD-SENATE. JANUARY 14, 

rency is gold and silver coin, and Treasury notes convertible into coin on demand of the holder. Should the Government issue Treasury 

notes only upon a deposit of a like amount in coin, or in extinguishment of outstanding bonds whose holders desired to convert them into 

notes, and stop national-bank notes as rapidly as the bank charters ex- pired, we should have a complete and happy solution of the financial 

problem with which the people would be perfectly content, having a currency possessing every element of an absolutely sound, st;able, con- vertible currency, and the war upon sih-cr, as unreasoning as destructive, would be brought to a close happily both to Government and 

people. 

The people of the West and South are, in my judgment, O\"erwhelmingly in favor of both gold and silver. This has been attributed by some in the gold interest-at money centers-to a fraudulent de ire to 

pay their debts at the rate of 80 cents to the dollar. A fouler libel was never uttered against a brave, honest, and indnstriouspeople. They propose to abide by their contracts, and if perturbations have been brought 

about in the marketable value of silver, until now it is worth in gold 

but 80 cents on the dollar, they know full well that this fall is the 

legitimate result of the efforts of combined capital to destroy silver as a money metal, and these gamblers but reap the fruits of their own folly. They know that the suspension of silver coinage means and is 

intended to mean, disguised as it may be, that silver shall never again 

be a medium of exchange and measure of value!. They know that 

such legislation would enhan~e the purchasing power of what money 

is leftr-gold and paper convertible into gold-and of necessity that the 

prices of products would correspondingly full. 

The cotton planter knows that he can get from $90 to $100 for 2 bales 

of cotton of 500 pounds each, and that if silver is demonetized it will 

take 3 bales to buy the same $90 or $100 that 2 bales will buy now, and 

he knows that the money bought with· the 2 bales will go just as far 

in the pa-yment of debts and taxes as the same money bought with 3 

bales. Again, anew departure has been taken by the single gold-standard men with a view of capturing the day laborer. They try to teach 

him that his day's labor is paid at the rate of 80 cents on the dollar. 

Does the laborer not know that he can buy just as much of the neces- sarie! of life with a silver dollar as with a gold dollar or a greenback dollar? Again, the day laborer knows perfectly well that if the product 

of his labor is reduced in price, his labor which produces it is neces- sarily and correspondingly reduced in price. 

The wheat planter knows as well as anybody that there has been in 

the last few years an amazing increase in the production of wheat in 

the British India possessions. He knows that that vast and populous 

country of the cheapest labor in the world has been penetrated by means of British capital from the shore to the interior with railways, 

and as a consequence wheat exportation has run up from a mere trifle 

to about 40,000,000 bushels per annum, competing in the Liverpool 

market with our 'V estern wheat, and he knows that the two hundred and 

fifty million people of India are silver-using people, that silver is their 

sole standard of value, and that the more silver they can get for their 

wheat the greater the stimulus to produce wheat. 

The same is true of low-grade cotton. Hence it is not strange that 

England, which controls this great business, should seek to make sil- ver cheap, but it is passing strange that an American should in his 

blind folly play into the hand of England. It is passing strange that 

the same men who profess such love for the laborer who manufactures 

should turn the deaf ear to the laborer who delves in the silver mines 

and to the farmer who produces the two leading exports of this country, wheat and cotton. 

It is well enough to understand that the American people demand 

both gold and silver, and that the great producing classes-whether agricultural, mining, or manufacturing-are not capitalists, and that it is 

not to their interest to have their product~!~ lessened in price by a con- traction of the circulating medium. They have no fear of too much 

gold ortoo much silver. There maybe anextraordinaryproductionof 

either for a time, as of gold between 1849 and 1858, when more than 

$900,000,000 gold was added to the world's volume, givinglifeandimpnlse to every enterprise. They fear as little the present production 

of silver as compared with gold. 

Sooner or later they will adjust themselves to about the fixed ratio, as they always have done. They are the world's money, designed and 

intended by an all-wise Providence for that purpose. They have been a medium of exchange and a measure of values since men began to 

form society. Leave them alone to perform their just functions. The 

people will say amen, and the only discontented class will be the moneychangers, who seek to prostitute the great powers of Government to an unholy purpose, by laying an unjust burden on an overtaxed people, 

wresting from them by force of law in the payment of debts more than 

is required bythecontract, and which injustice, equity, and good conscience they ought not to be required to pay. 

~ , JUDICIAL, SALARIES. 

Mr. HOAR. I now call np the unfini'3hed business, and I desire to 

n.3k the Senate to spend the ten or fifteen minutes which it may take 

to deal with that bill in passing it. · 

l The Sent\te, as in Committee ~f the Whole, resumed the -consideration of the bill (S. 6) fixing the salMies of the several judges of the 

United States district courts at $5,000 per annum, and for other purpo es, the pending question being on the amendment proposed by Mr. 

MORGAN to add as an additional section the following: 

SEc. 3. That the first section of this ad shall only apply to judges who are hereafter appointed by and with the advice and consent of the Senate. 

Mr. :McMILLAN. Let the first section of the bill be read. 

Mr. HOAR. It is not necessary to read it. This is merely an amendment providing that the increase of salary shall not apply to any ex- isting judge, but only to future judges. 

l\Ir. McMILLAN. Is that it? 

Mr. HOAR. · That is the proposition of the Senator from Alabama. 

I do not think the Senator who moved it expects it to be adopted by 

the Senate. 

The PRESIDING OFFICER (Mr. FRYE in the chair). The question :is on agreeing to the amendment of the Senator from Alabama 

[.Mr. MORGAN]. 

The amendment was rejected. 

Mr. EDUUNDS. I move to strike out, in section 2, line 10, all after 

the word "member" down to the end of the section, and when the 

Secretary reports it I will state my reasons. 

The PRESIDING OFFICER. The amen.sJ.ment will be stated. 

The SECRETARY. In section 2, after the word "member," in line 

10, it is proposed to strike out the words: 

And no person heretofore so appointed or employed, being so l'elateu to such 

justice or judge, shall continue in said office or employment afl~r the expiration 

of six months from the passage of this act. 

The PRESIDING OFFICER. The question is on agreeing to the 

amendment proposed by the Senator from Vermont [Ur. EDMUNDS]. 

:Mr. EDMUNDS. I am satisfied on reflection, and I believe a ma- jority of the committee are satisfied, though we have had no formal 

action about it, that this would be doing a great injustice to a large num- ber of gentlemen who without reproach have taken up these positions 

and held them foro. great many years as clerks, &c.-almost entirely 

clerks; entirely, so far as I know-whom the effect of this bill wonld 

be to turn out of office by an edict of Congress, if Congress should be 

understood to have the power to do that thing; and although it might 

rectify some occasional case where there has been an abuse which could 

be rectified in the ordinary course of justice, the balance of unkind- ness and injustice and unfairness to a large number of worthy persons 

would be so great, that I think we ought to strike out that clause and 

make the bill simply, as all bills ordinarily ought to be, prospective in 

its operation, and not touch any existing clerks of these courts who 

may happen to be related within the fourth degree to the jndge. 

Mr. COKE. Mr. President, I hope the amendment of the Senator 

from Vermont will not prevail. If there are a large number of clerks 

related to the judges, holding office under them, it renders a provision 

of that character the more necessary. 

I hold that a judge is not an impartial arbiter between his own kins- men and the suitors in his court in adj'usting fees and costs, as they frequently have to do, and thatthere is no species of nepotism so hurtful 

to the public interests as that which occurs in the Federal courts. 

I offered originally the clause which the amendment proposes to 

strike out, and I gave some instances of nepotism in Texas~ Just as I was leaving home I saw published in a newspaper (and I have no doubt 

of its truth and correctness) that a Federal judge, and he is a most es- timable man and an able and acceptable judge, in whose court a railroad had been in litigation-the road had been in the hands of a receiver 

-in fixing the fees of attorneys and officers of the court fixed the fee 

of his son, who was a commissioner or master in chancery, at 10,000. 

I do not mean to say that the allowance was an impro'Per one or that 

it had not been earned, but that the relationship existing between the 

judge and the officer is such as ought to disqualify him for sitting in 

judgment in such a case. I give that as an illustration of the working 

of the present system under which Federal courts are filled with the 

relatives of the judges. When a question comes up between one of these 

related officials and a suitor in the court I do not believe that the sui tor 

has a fair chance for justice. 

I do not believe that an abuse of this sort should be permitted to 

exist. I believe that above all things the fountains of justice should 

be held above the suspicion of contamination, and as long as judges can fill the offices of their courts with their own :relatives it is calculated to give the general public a poor idea of the purity of judicial 

administration, especially when they see the favoritism that prevails 

in the rulings of courtB, particularly upon questions of costs where 

their relatives arc concerned. 

Now, sir, I will vote for this bill with that clause in it. I will vote 

for the bill in order to get that clause. Without it I, for one; will oppose 

the bill. I believe it is much more important to have that clause than 

it is to pass that portion of the bill raising the salaries of the judges. 

If I can not get that clause I do not want the bill, and I hope that the ·senate will vote down the amendment proposed by the Senator from 

Vermont. 

:Mr. EDMUNDS. Mr. President, I am happy, or sorry as the case may be, to sa.y that I have no relative, so far as I know, within any 

degree of consanguinity or affinity, who is either a judge, or the son of 
1886. OONGRESSIONAL REOORD-SENATE. 657 

a judge, qr the nephew of a judge, Ol' the cousin of a judge, or in any 

way related to a judge. 

I suppose there have been abuses in the admtnistration of justice in 

the granting of too large compensation to commissioners who have been 

sons of judges. I suppose there have been equal abuses in the administmtion of justice in granting too large compensations to commission- ers who have not been the sons of judges or in any otherwise l'elated ·to judges. It is an evil which will creep into every administration. I 

believe in keeping the administration of justice above suspicion. I believe in keeping the administration of the executive branches of the 

Government and the legislative branches of the Government above sus- picion; and I believe anybody who will look at the Congressional Directories from the time when they began, fifty years ago down to now, 

will see that in every department of the Government, the Senate included, the sons of high Government officials, Presidents, Secretaries of 

State, Secretaries of the Treasury, and so on and so on, and the sons and kinsmen of Senators have been employed by these officials in the 

service of the Government in some subordinate capacity; and even this 

reform Administration, a picture of purity and grace and everything 

that is lovely, has sent to the Senate-I can state it as a public factthe nomination of a father and son to go to the same place to offices one under the other in one instance that I remember. I think there are one or two others, but I only speak of what I l'emember; and that was not an appointment·to turn out any father and any son who were already in office on acconnt of the fact that they were related and were in positions of subordination and superiority to each other, but for the 

future prospectively. 

Now, this bill, if you agree to my amendment, will forbid anything 

of that kind in the future in the courts. If you do not agree to it, taking the courts out of all the other category of what is called nepotism, 

then in order to correct what my friend seems to suppose is an abusebut that would depend on the case and how much would have been 

properly allowed to anybody else in awarding a commissioner in Texas, 

the son or the nephew of the judge, what he suggests may have been 

too large a fee-you are by an edict of Congress, supposing it to be con- stitutional, which I will not discuss, to say that persons now. holding 

judicial positions with honor and without reproach, who have devoted 

their life-work to that special kind of information and know ledge which 

is valuable as the clerks of courts, are to be dismissed because in some one instance or more that can be named it has been found that the son or the nephew of a judge has been guilty of some impropriety, if he 

has been. It does not prove that somebody in the same place with such a judge would not have been guilty of the same impropriety if he hml 

not been the son or the nephew of the judge. 

So it seems to me to be right and fair, and I repeat that I believe such 

is the opinion of the committee, to leave this bill prospective. and to 

bear whatever evil there may be, if there be any, in the existing order 

of things rather than to do a gross injustice to a number of people who 

without reproach and to the universal acceptation of the bo.r and the 

community discharge these functions, though they happen to be within 

this degree of relationship to the judge. 

Mr. COCKRELL. I should like to ask the Senator if the principle 

of the bill is right why ought it not to apply to existing cases just as well as to the future? 

Mr. EDMUNDS. For the same reasoa that applies to all legislation. 

We pass acts correcting maladministration of the Treasury Department; we do not pass edicts providing for what has already happened and has 

been done; we make the bill therefore perfectly prospective, which is 

the true theory of legislation, of law as distinguished from the mere force 

of will of a person or a body or a governor that has the power, or at any 

rate claims to exercise it, of passing an edict declaring that A B, who 

holds office, shall not hold it any longer. 

Mr. COCKRELL. Mr. President, I should like to know from the 

Senator :from Vermont why the Judiciary Committee reported as an amendment to the original biH the proposition to take away this right 

from the judges unless it was because of the abuse that exists. Is not 

that the cause of it? 

Mr. EDl\IUNDS. Yes; IthinktheCommitteeon theJudiciary were misled by the potentandjustforce in generalofthe wishesofthe Senator from Texas, who is a member of it. He mentioned this case of 

abuse, and without taking much time for reflection and consideration as to how it would operate upon innocent men, we agreed to do that 

thing. Upon reflection we find that it would do great injustice, do more harm than good, and therefore we have thought it better to le!l.ve 

the matter to be entirely prospective. 

Mr. COCKRELL. That is a very plausible answer to the query, but 

unfortunately the printed record does not sustain it. I find that Senator HoAR, of Massachusetts, introduced this bill, and in the original 

draught the provision exists which is now being criticised. 

Mr. HOAR. Will the Senator pardon me? This bill passed the Senate last year, the bill to raise the salaries. In the Senate, and against 

my resistance, the clause which was attached to the bill as I reported 

it this year was annexed. I resisted it, not as thinking the clause 

wrong in principle, but because it related to another subject, and I did 

not think it belonged propexly or fairly upon thi'3 bill; but the Senate 

XVIT- -42 

were of a different opinion. Then in introducing the bill at this ses- sion I introduced it in deference to the opinion of a majority of the 

Senate as it passed last year. Then it was only prospective in its operation. So the judgment of the Senate is in accordance with the present 

judgment of the honorable Senator from Vermont, as expressed last 

year. 

In the Judiciary Committee, however, this retrospective clause was added for the reason which the honorable Senator from Vermont states. 

There have come to the knowledge of the committee and of Senators 

outside of the committee several instances of persons who are not now receiving any emolument the amount of which is measured by the discretion or decree of the judge at all. It depends on a fixed law. One 

of them, at lea~t, whose case has been brought to my knowledge, which 

is that of the clerk of the Court of Claims in this city, was appointed 

by a court of which his brother-in-law was one of the four or five mem- bers. I have forgotten the number of members of the court; the Senator will know. 

Mr. COCKRELL. Five. 

Mr. HOAR. He was appointed absolutely on his merits. I have no 

doubt he would have been appointed if his brother-in-law had not been 

there. He is a man who is a very accomplished person and knows more about the history of the claims against the Government and thew hole 

practice of that court probably than anybody else in the country, un- less you except one or two of the judges, and he is a man who has a difficulty with his voice and tongue, so that he can not easily devote 

himself to the ordinary practice of the law. 

Now I think my friend from Missouri and my friend from Texas will 

agree that, while even in the matter of selecting a clerk to do purely 

clerical duty for a salary and nothing else, never to have any function 

committed to him which is to. be compensated by a scale determined 

by the court, it is not wise as a future permanent policy to allow the 

question of selection between him and other competitors or applicants 

for the office to be determined by a near relative or to be determined 

by a tribunal of which a near relative is one; yet when that has been 

done under the permission of the existing law, and the act has taken 

effect, the man has given his life to a faithful and honest service profitable to the public and the country in an office to which he was so appointed, it is very hard indeed for Congress now to swoop down and by 

a retroactive act turn that man out of his office. 

We had a case in Massachusetts which probably nearly all the New 

England Senators will recognize. The very model and beau ideal of 

all clerks of courts was Mr. Clark Wilde, of Suffolk County, in Massachusetts. He was appointed when his father, who was a model and 

venerable judge on our supreme bench more than thirty years, was a. member of the court; but he was appointed as absolutely on his merits as any man was ever appointed to an office in this world. He would 

have been appointed if his father had not been there, as the fittest man the court could find. Perhaps it would have been better to have had an ordinary general rule which would have prohibited the appointment 

of even so good a man as Mr. Wilde on that occasion, but it certainly 

would have been a reproach if after he had been in his seat fifteen or twenty years the Massachusetts Legislature should have turned him 

out of office because his father happened to be one of the judges of the 

court that appointed him. · 

Mr. COCKRELL. How long would he be satisfied to hold one office 

in Massachusetts? 

M.r. HOAR. I think everybody agrees in Massachusetts and every- - where else that where an able lawyer leaves his practice and becomes 

clerk of a court he should be kept there as long as he performs his duties 

fa.i thfully. 

Mr. COCKRELL. I want to vindicate my good friend from Texas 

[Mr. CoKE] from the charge of overawing and overriding the will of 

the Committee on the Judiciary, with the distinguished Senator from 

Vermont [Ur. EDl\IUNDS] at its head. It seems that this provision has 

crept into this bill by reason of the exertions of the Senator from Texas, one of the newest members of that committee. I will read for the edification of my good friend from Mnssachusetts the bill just as he presented it at this session, and I understand that he presented it just as it passed the Senate at the last session: 

SEc. 2. That no person related to any justice or judge of any court of the 

United States by affinity or consanguinity, within the degree of first cousin, 

shall be appointed to or employed in any office or duty in any court of which 

such ju tice or judge may be a member; and no person heretofore so appointed or employed shall continue ia said office or employment after the expiration of 

sb:: months from the passage of this act. 

:Mr. HOAR. I did not, I think. 

Mr. COCKRELL. But the bill shows that exactly, unless the c.om- mittee has made a £~lse report to the Senate. 

Mr. HOAR. . Why, Mr. PresidentMr. COCKRELL. The words in Italics are the amendments. I have 

not read them. 

Mr. HOAR. The Senator from Missouri is right, I believe. 

Mr. COCKRELL. Certainly I am. 

Mr. HO.A.R. The bill as I originally introduced it went further than 

my memory supposed, but still the substance of my statement is cor~ 

rcct. 
658 CONGRESSIONAL RECORD-SENATE. J.ANUARY 14, 

Mr. COCKRELL. Then the Senator from Texas did not overawe the 

committee. 

:Mr. HOAR. . The second section was put in in the Senate last winter 

against my remonstrance, and the bill was introduced at this session as it passed the Senate last year. That is the fact. 

Mr. COCKRELL. I was sure of that, because there could be no mistake about it. It shows on its face. 

I hope that the amendment of the Senator from Vermont will not be 

agreed to. The evil exists. The Senator says that it is necessary to 

cut down any opportunity for the growth of that evil in the future. 

Now let us eradicate what exists, and then it will be exactly right. 

Ur. JACKSON. Ur. President, I concur heal'tilyin the amendment 

proposed by the Senator from Vermont, for I doubt the policy of ever legislating any office-holder out of office. I think that when an officer 

goes in under a law and discharges his duty he should never be legislated out of office. It is true there are some clerks perhaps who are not 

discharging their duties with exceeding propriety and who are favored 

by relatives presiding over the courts; but we should not because of a few cases of incompetent officers of that kind legislate good men out of 

office, for it can not be denied that there are competent clerks faithfully 

discharging their duties who have been appointed by relatives. Now 

let us make the law prospective and not retrospective, as it was originally reported. I concur in the amendment, and think it is the wisest 

policy and the best course to pursue. 

~:lr. COKE. If there is anything retrospective in this amendment, 

I can not see it. Has the office:r: any vested right in his office? He is 

subject to be removed at any time by the judge; he holds the office at 

the will and pleasure of the judge. Has he an estate in it which is 

being divested if the bill as reported be passed? It seems to me that 

he has not. It is not a proper case for the application of the principle 

respecting retrospective laws. 

Now, sir, if it is proper to adopt an amendment at all upon this subject, it is because of abuses which in the past, in the absence of a law 

forbidding them, have obtained; it is because the forbidden privilege 

has been abused by the district judges. If this be true, and if it is 

proposed to make a prospective law on this subject, why not go further 

and remove existing abuses? 

This bill as reported to the Senate passed the Senate at the last ses- sion with this amendment upon it. It was offered by myself in open 

session of the Senate. It has been approved by the Senate, but since 

that time p 3rsonal importunities and personal entreaties and personal 

influences, creditable to the kindness of heart of the Senators who have 

been operated upon, but in my judgment not in accord with the public 

interest, have been brought to bear to raise an opposition to this amendment now that did not exist then. An abuse of any sort can not be 

attacked without being beset by this same character of influence if they 

have time enough to rally. Here is an admitted abuse, one that the 

Senate deems sufficient cause to enact a law against to prevent in the 

future. The cause ofthe enactment of that law is the existence of an abuse which the Senate can remedy. I cau see no reason for failing to remove the existing cause that would not apply equally well to the 

prospective law. 

Ur. President, I admit that hardships may follow, but personal interests ought to give way to public good. I hope that the amendment 

of the Senator from Vermont will be voted down. 

Mr. EDMUNDS. Mr. President, I agree with the Senator from Texas 

that whenever a public body undertakes to attack an abuse, if there is 

time enough allowed, the people who are interested in that abuse will 

do everything they can to prevent that attack being successful. I also 

agree to what I presume he would agree to, that whenever the Congress of the United States proposes to do an injustice, and an injury to 

the public service combined with it, the people who are the victims of 

that injustice have a right to complain and to be heard. They are the 

people for whom I am speaking and of whom I am speaking. 

I beg to remind my friend from Texas, which I think ought to satisfy 

the matter he has in view, that if my amendment be agreed to all that 

will be left of the powers of these people who are left in office, which 

they have taken under a law that allowed it, will be the powers that the 

law imputes to them, and thatifthere be a clerk in acourtwhosefuther or uncle is judge, that father or uncle as judge can not designate that 

clerk either to be a master for any special occasion, or a. commissioner for 

any special occasion, or a receiver or any other thing except what the law 

imputes to him. The judge can do no new act which confers any new 

power or authority upon his relative. So it really leaves these innocent 

people, the most of whom are perfectly innocent and desired by the 

whole bodies of the bar, to perform simply the functions of their proper 

office. I remember the Pennsylvania bar sent a. representation to me 

about a gentleman there, and the whole body of the bar on all sides say 

that it would not only be an injustice to this gentleman, but it would 

be a. great injury to the public service to legislate him out of his office 

of clerk of that court, and yet that kinsman of his, if the bill passes 

with my amendment, can not have imputed to him by his uncle any new powers or other powers than those that thelawnowfi.xes and regulates. That ought to satisfY my friend from Texas and attain the 

object that he has in view referring to the case he has stated. 

The PRESIDING OFFICER (Mr. FBYE in the chair). The question 

is on the amendment of the Senator from Vermont [.Ur. EDMUNDS]. 

Mr. COKE. I call for the yeas and nays. 

The yeas and nays were ordered and taken. 

Ur. JONES, of Arkansas (after having voted in the negative). I 

voted under a misapprehension. I am paired with the Senator from 

Indiana [Mr. HARBISON]. I do not know how he would vote if he were present. I withdraw my vote. 

Mr. BECK. On this question I am paired with the Senator from 

Maine [1\fr. HALE], who is necessarily absent. 

Mr. CAMDEN (after having voted in the negative). I voted under a misapprehension. I am paired with the Senator from Rhode Island 

[Mr. ALDRICH]. I withdraw my vote. 

Ur. COCKRELL. My colleague [Mr. VEST] was called away from 

the Senate Chamber by important business a few minutes ago. He is 

paired with the Senator from Pennsylvania [Mr. CAMERON]. My colleague would vote ''nay '' if present. 

Mr. McPHERSON. I am paired with my colleague [Mr. SEWELL], 

and as I do not know how he would vote on this question, I withhold 

my vote. 

Mr. BUTLER. I am paired generally with the Senator from P enn- sylvania [Mr. CAMERoN]. Not knowing how he would vote, I decline 

to vote. 

Mr. EDMU.NDS. The Senator from South-Carolina may vote. We 

have paired the Senator from Pennsylvania [Mr. CAMERON] with the 

Senator from Missouri [Mr. VEST]. 

1\fr. GEORGE. I am paired with the Senator from New Hampshire 

[Mr. PIKE] on party questions. I have not regarded this as a party 

question; but so many have recognized pairs on it that I suppose it is 

better for me to withdraw my vote. I want to place it on record, 

though, that I am against the amendment. 

The result was announced-yeas 28, nays 14; as follows: 

.Allison, Bowen, Chace, 

Congm·, 

Cullom, 

Dawes, Edmunds, 

Berty, 

Blackburn, 

Brown, 

Cockrell, 

Aldrich, 

Beck, 

Blair, Butler, 

Call, 

Camden, 

Cameron, Dolph, 

Eustis, 

Evart, 

Frye, 

Gibson, 

Gray, 

Hampton, 

Hoar, Ingalls, 

YEAS-28. 

Jackson, 

McMillan, 

:Mahone, 

Miller ofN. Y. Morrill, 

Payne, 

Platt, 

N,A..Ys-14. 

Plumb, 

Sabin, 

Sawyer, 

Spooner, 

Teller, 

Wilson of Iowa, 

Wilson of Md. 

Coke, 

Colquitt, 

Harris, 

:Maxey, 

?.fitch ell of Oreg., Voorhees, 

Morgan, Walthall. 

Vance, 

VanWyck, 

ABSENT-34. 

Fair, Kenna, 

George, Logan, 

Gorman, McPherson, 

Hale, Manderson, 

Harrison, Miller of Cal. 

Hawley, Mitchell of Pa. Jones of Arkansas, Palmer, Jones of Florida, Pike, Jones of Nevada, Pugh, 

Ransom, 

Riddleberger, 

Saulsbury, 

Sewell, 

Sherman, 

Stanford, 

Vest. 

So the amendment was agreed to. 

Mr. CALL. I move to add to the bill the following additional sec- tion: 

SEC. -. That the actual traveling and other expenses of judges of the circuit court :while holding court or traveling to and from;court shall be paid to them. 

That no judge who has become disabled from performing the duties of the office 

from the habit of using intoxicating liquors, or from any other cause, shall h ave a right to the additional p a y provided for in this act; and that on r easonable evidence of such fact being furnished the Attorney-General of the United States 

he shall bring a proceeding by quo warranto before some judge of the circuit court to try and decide whether such judge has forfeited his right to such office 

by failing to perform the conditions-subsequent on which he received the same; and if'the said court shall decide on such proceeding that such judge is so disabled, the Pre ident shall retire him on the salary now provided by law, unless 

the said judge shall be removed by impeachment.. · 

The PRESIDING OFFICER. The question is on agreeing to the 

amendment proposed by the Senator from Florida [Mr. CALL]. 

The amendment was rejected. 

Mr. MORGAN. In section 1, line 4, I move to strike out ".five" 

and insert "four;" so as to read: 

That the.salaries of the several judges of the district courts of the United Stales 

shall hereafter be at the rate of $!,000 per annum. 

The PRESIDING OFFICER. The question is on agreeing to the 

amendment proposed by the Senator from Alabama [1\11'. MORGAN]. 

Mr. MORGAN. Mr. President, I desire to submit some remarks upon 

that feature of the bill. I have not heard of any great public clamor or outcry among the people of this country for the increase of the salariesof district judges of the United States. I am sure that in my State 

such a proposition would meet with pu'Qlic condemnation, and I could 

not vote what I esteem to be and what I am satisfied is the will of the 

people of Alabama if I were to vote to give this great increase from 

3,500 to 5,000 in the salaries of the district judges who are in Aln.-

bama and in that vicinity. 

This proposed increase of salary seems to be suggested by the idea iha t 

the men who are on the district bench of the United States, being com-
1886. c·ONGRESSIONAL REOORD-SENATE. 659 

petent lawyers, are entitled to more compensation than they are get- . ting for their services. The proposition to increase the allowance from 

$3,500 to $5,000 comes only from the bar. I do notrememberto have seen any petition, to hav& heard any suggestion, from the great body 

of the tax-paying people of this country to the effect that the district 

judges of the United States are being very badly underpaid, and so I 

shall treat this question as one that comes from the bar. 

It does credit to the bar of the United States that they should desire 

to see their brethren in the profession amply paid for their services. I 

believe that I have as much of the esprit de corps as perhaps any other 

lawyer. At the same time I have some regard for the people who have 

to pay the money for these salaries ; and looking back over the history 

of our country and .finding that the salary was very much lower in many 

instances in the beginning of the Government than it is now, and that 

it has been increased from time to time 1.mtil it -has got to be generally 

$3,500, I do not remember a single case-perha.ps there are some; it 

hasescapedmyattention, however-whereadistrictjudgeofthe United 

States has resigned his office in consequence of the parsimony of the 

salary. 

:Mr. HOAR. If the Senator will pardon me, I will state that the district judge in New York, a model of judicial ability, Judge Choate, a distinguished lawyer of a distinguished race of lawyers, was appointed 

to the bench three or four years ago to the general satisfaction of all 

persons, with the understanding that the salary would probably be 

raised very soon, and for the failure of the bill to raise his salary he 

resigned. That gentleman was the judge of a court which, if there 

should be a war between this country and any Europea,n power, would 

represent the jurisprudence of the United States in prize causes, and in 

the matter of the law of nations would have property to the amount of 

hundreds of thousands, perhaps millions, of dollars before him for adj u- dication. He left the bench, because of the inadequacy of the sa,lary, 

within two years, I think-within three years, at any rate-of his 

appointment. 

Mr. MORGAN. We have had one name suggested. Can any other 

Senator name another? The argumentthenon that side stands on the 

ground that Mr. Choate--

Mr. HOAR. I am not prepared to affirm that Judge Lowell, of the 

Boston court, one of the most emiJ:lent jurists in this country, who re- signed his seat three or four years ago, did it for that cause. 

Mr. PLA.TT. He left the circuit court. 

Mr. HOAR. Yes; he left the circuit court, not the district court. 

Mr. MORGAN. He left a .five-thousand-dollar salary. 

Mr. HOAR. Yes; he left the circuit court. 

Mr. MORGAN. Judge Dillon did that, and went into the railroad 

bnsiness. 

Mr. HOAR. Several circuit judges have resigned on account of the 

inadequacy of the sala.ry. 

Mr. MORGAN. Judge Dillon did that. 

Mr. TELLER. Judge McCrary did it. 

Mr. MORGAN. Judge 1\lcCraryfust resigned from the War Department to get on the bench, and then he resigned from the bench to get 

into better employment. It seems that the indorsement which the Senate gives to a lawyer by putting him on the circuit bench of the United 

States is a great recommendation to his clients, and the judges are not 

wanting in temptations to leave the bench, I am sorry to say, even leaving a .five-thousand-dollar salary, with some other emoluments which 

are given to them, I believe, in certain cases. Now, we have one district judge in the United States, who has been 

named, a gentleman who went UJ>On the bench with the expectation 

that he would get 5, 000 salary, but being disappointed in that he concluded that he would not stay there. Then we have .fifty-six judges-

! believe that is the number-on the bench·in the United States, and we have had a great retinue of them since the Government was or- dained, and I repeat the remark, that I have not been in1brmed of any 

case where a judge has resigned because of the smallness of the salary 

which has been given to him except the one mentioned by the Senator from 1L'l.Ssachusetts. 

Mr. PLATT. I think Judge William D. Shipman, of the district 

of Connecticut, resigned on that account. 

Mr. MORGAN. If one resigned in the district of Connecticut, that 

makes two. Looking at the evil that we are trying to remedy, and 

adapting our legislation to a supposed evil, we .find that there are two 

judges out of perhaps two hundred and .fifty who have held this office 

and drawn this salary, who have resigned. ~ there a public necessity, I inquire again, for raising the salary from 

$3,500 to 5,000 in order to keep good talent on the bench or in order 

to keep men of integrity on the bench? I think I have not known a 

case where there was less excuse or less reason, so far as the public sentiment and the public service are concerned, for increasing the stipend of 

officers than this one. 

I know that the style of living among men is more extravagant than 

it was perhaps when the law was .first enacted, but at the same time the 

cost of living is not everywhere more expensive. But I do not understand that it is the business of the Congress of the United States to put 

this judicial office up as a prize and temptation for easy living and for 

money making. It is a very high, and distinguished, and dignified 

office, and there is no judge of a district court in the United States presiding in a circuit court who has not after all frequently very much more important duties to perform than the judge in Massachusetts cited by 

the Senator from that State, who in ca.se of war would _ have a large 

number of prize causes to determine and a vast amount of property to 

dispose of. Every one of these district judges when sitting in a circuit 

court at some time or other has to dispose of the question of human 

life, and a proper decision on a trial for a capital offense in a circuit 

court of the United States by a competent man is, after all, a very much 

higher reach of judicial power and a very muCh more important thing 

to attend to than the distribution of money in prize causes. So I think 

the argument on that side is not at all enhanced in value by the :fa.ct 

that in case we should have a war there might be one district in the 

United States, or several indeed, where the prize causes would bring 

very important questions and very large amounts of money before the 

courts for adjudication. 

It must be remembered that these officers hold their places for life. 

It is an important thing, particularly with our laws in regard to the · retirement of judges after they become superanuated, that a man should 

have a stipend secured to him for life, of which there is to be no abatement during his continuance in office, whether npon the bench or after 

he has been put into retirement, A salary of $3,500 for life is worth 

far more to a man and his family as a stated income, a secured income, 

than the -salary of $5,000 which is paid to Senators who hold their offices · for the term of six years, and it is a very much more important matter 

than the allowance to the Cabinent officers of the country. It is a very 

much more secure living than is given to any other class of persons in 

the United States, unless it may be Army officers. 

When we come to consider the distinction between Army officers and 

judges of the courts, there is a matter of importance to which I desire 

to call the attention of the Senate which I thi.rik should affect our votes upon this question. · A judge is placed upon the bench, confirmed 

by the Senate, and it is found afterward that he is a man in ill-health. 

He drags along his weary way at the expense of the docket, and of 

clients, and of justice; and that feature of the fundamental law which 

says that justice shall be administered without sale, denial, or delay 

is virtually abrogated by the fact that the judge is himself physically 

unable to perform the full measure of his duties. Yet you can not get 

rid of him. He stays there. He is there for life. If you fixed the 

salary at 3,500 when he went on the bench you can not reduce it; the 

Constitution prohibits you. If you raise it to $5,000 you can never 

reduce it; the Constitution prohibits yon. When you enaet this law 

to give him $5,000, it remains-there beyond the power of Congress to 

revoke it. Another judge is shown to be incompetent. A fair trial 

before the bar and before the country proves that the man is not quali.fied for the place in respect of his legal attainments or perhaps in re~ 

spect of his moral character. He may commit no crime a.:,aainst the 

Government, no high misdemeanor in office for which you could impeach him, and the only means ordained in the Constitution of remov- ing that man from office by impeachment virtually falls. Another 

man comes in and he is corrupt; it is obvious that he is corrupt. He 

abuses the powers of his office, the high trust in him, and you go to 

the House of Representatives to get articles of impeachment voted 

aga.inst him. That body of three hundred and twenty-five men have so much to do, so many various cares on their minds, that they will 

not take up the subject; they will not vote the imJ>eachment. It is 

the easiest matter in the world to defer and to delay the inauguration 

of an impeachment in the other Houseaslongasthedefendantchooses; 

and when you get it into the Senate we have scarcely time to sit here 

and try impeachments. The result is that the responsibility of the 

judiciary of this country to public sentiment, the responsibility to the 

law, is a dead letter on the statute-book. 

How then is it with the Army officers? If an officer of the Army, 

who is in for life and who is paid, !will admit, a high salary, commits some breach of military law or is guilty of some outrage against public 

justice, he is tried by a court-martial of his peers in the Army, and we 

.find frequently that these men are brought \o task in those tribunals 

and they are broken of their offices. 

There a.I'e two classes of persons in the United States who hold office 

for life, the Army, which the Constitution and Rules and Articles of War 

provide shall have a speedy method of getting rid of bad material, and 

the judiciary, who when they are once fastened npon the country are fastened upon it for good and all. 

I think in viE;)w of these facts we ought to be chary about increasing 

the stipend of the judges, and I think particularly when we do come 

to increase their salaries by as much as 1,500 to each judge per annum we should say to them and to the country, ''This act is not to take 

effect in your favor until you are willing to bring your claim before 

the Senate of the United States for an investigation into your conduct; 

and if the President of the United States shall appoint you and the 

Senate ~?hall confirm you to this office, after a full investigation into 

your judicial career, then well done, good and faithful servant, we will 

give you your reward; we will give you the 1, 500 a year in addition.' 1 

As we are moving in a new direction and as we are taking a tremendous 

step to the front in favor of all the judges in the United States, when we are giving to some judges $1,500 a year additional salary who do 
660 CONGRESSION .AL RECORD--SEN .ATE. JANUARY 14, 

not do throughout the year thirty days' work upon the bench, it is 

well enough for us to say in behalf of the people of this country that 

those judges shall receive it who are willing to take it at the expense 

of the resignation of their commissions, trusting to the reputation which 

they have earned and the confidence which they have gained while 

they have been employed in their high offices for an appointment by 

the President and a confirmation by the Senate. 

If I were making this argument for the first time during the Presidency of a Democrat in tbe White House, perhaps I might be suspected 

of a desire to draw within the appointing power the judges in the 

United States; but thissame questioncameup under Mr. Arthur's administration, when I supposed, as the world supposed, that the chances were about even as to whether there would be a Democratic or a Republican administration hereafter, and I wanted to give this power to 

a Republican President in order that the Senate of the United States 

might have some chance, when conferring benefits and favors in a large 

degree upon the judges, to say whether they were worthy of them in 

the estimation of the country. 

Now, when we reflect that after this proposed law goes on the statutebook it is to stay there and that we can not afterward reduce the salary, when it is to be a law that will be irrevocable as long as this coun- try continues, for that will be the effect of it, an irrepealable law, I say 

that Tie ought to take advantage of this opportunity t{) have a re-ex- . amination into the character and the conduct of the judges who are on the district bench of the United States, and we should say to them, 11 You shall not take this increase of pay unless you resign and are reappointed by the President, by and with the advice and consent of the 

Senate.'' 

I argue the two propositions together, although the one is not presented in the amendment that I am at present offering to the Senate, for the reason that they stand united in principle, and it is not right 

that we should give this additional salary to the judges without giving 

to the people some opportunity to have the bench purged of bad and 

inefficient material. Can every Senator on this floor rise and say in his 

place that the judge who presides in the district court of his district or 

of his State is a man who is worthy and well qualified? I could not. 

Without the slightest reference to the political phase that has been 

injected into the district court of the United States and all the other 

courts by the fact of the long dominance of the Republican party in this 

country, it has turned out in practice that during the period of agitation after the war as well as during the war some men have found places 

upon the bench of the United States who are not worthy. They are men who I believe would not be willing to resign their offices for the 

purpose or with the expectation of being reappointed by the President 

and reconfirmed by the Senate. If they are men of that kind let them 

remain under a salary of$3,500. If they are not, if they have earned a larger sum, in the estimation of the Senate of the United States, by a worthy course in office and they resign, whether they are Democrats or whether they are Republicans, they will find every man in the Senate 

voting for their confirmation and glad to do it. 

Mr. President., the people of Alabamahavetheir part oftheta.xation 

to pay for the judge in my district. We are not exempt from taxation 

because we are poor. Under the burden oftariff regulations and laws, 

being large consumers and manufacturing but little, we pay large 

amounts of money into the Treasury of the United States out of that 

three hundred millions of cotton crop that we produce annually besides 

other things which we produce there. So we are tax-payers and we are very much interested in it. It makes no difference to the Alabama 

farmer or planter whether he hasto pay the money out of his pocket to 

the tax-gathererofthe State orwhether hepays itthrough a tariff into 

the Treasury. It is the question of the amount, whether he is able to 

bear it or not, that affects him. And our people understand perfectly 

well that they are tax-payers, and that when you raise the salary of the 

district judge in Alabama from $3,500 to $5,000 a year they have to pay 

their aliquot part of this taxation. 

Now, sir, let me give you a little of the history of that State with a 

view to justify the vote that I feel compelled to give on this floor upon 

this bill. After the war and reconstruction had terminated and the people of that Stat.e for the first time got their government into their own hands, they adopted a constitution in which they fixed low ::.alaries for 

all their officers, the judiciary, the executive officers, all the officers. 

The expenses of the State government of Alabama, exclusive of the 

school fund to which we appropriate liberally, do not exceed a million 

and a quarter of dollars a year, and that pays the interest on every dollar of money that we owe. A million and a quarter a year ! Yet our people feel in that State that the burden of that taxation is pretty heavy. 

They would be very glad indeed to see it lightened, in view of the fact 

that their industries are not all very profitable, not certainly very moneymaking. They fixed the salary of the chief-justice of the supreme 

court of the State at 3,500; they fixed the salary of the associate justices at$3,000; they fixed thesalaryofthe circuitjudgesandofthe chancellors at $2,000; and there is not a man on the circuit or chancery bench or supreme court bench of Alabama to-day who is not a superior lawyer 

tothedistrictjudgeof the United States in that State, who gets $3,500-

not one. 

Now is it to be expected of me that I shall vote to tax those people to 

raise that man's salary from $3,500 a year to $5,000 when my own S tate 

in her earnest desire to build up her prosperity-more than that, sir, to · write her glory upon the escutcheon which as yet has never had a tarnish-is it expected of me that I shall under these circumstances vote 

to give to the district judge of the United States $5,000 a year out of 

the pockets of those people as a snlary when her constitution forbids 

that her governor and her chief-justice of the supreme court shall have more than $3,500 unless it is voted by a two-thirds majority of both 

branches of the General Assembly? 

I am willing to meet the Senators on a fair standard. As there are some cases in the United States where doubtless the salary ought to be 

increased, I am willing to go $500 on the present salary all around, 

make it $4,000; and then you have got, as !remember, but two judges 

in the United States who get any more. A judge in California gets 

$5, 000, and I believe that one of the judges in New York gets $4,500. 

:M:r. ED.MUNDS. One in Louisiana gets $4,500. 

Mr. MORGAN. Yes, andonein Californiagets$5,000; butthehighest salary now paid a New York district United States judge is $4,500, 

and so as to the other judges in the large cities; but an allowance is 

made by statute for judges who preside in certain cities. 

M:r. EDMUNDS. No; who go out of their districts. 

Mr. MORGAN. We can very easily provide for those cases. If we can provide for judges who go out of their districts so as to meet the 

contingencies which were not expected when those gentlemeu were placed upon the bench, we can very easily add to their salaries such a daily stipend as we may vote when they are presiding in court in such 

cities as New York, Philn.delphia, Boston, Saint Louis, Chicago, Cincinnati, and so on-expensive places. But is there any reason why we should go among the judges who have very little to do, who have no admiralty jurisdiction, but exercise almost anomiual discharge of duty 

upon the bench-is there any reason why we should go among them 

and give them all 5, 000 a year? I am willing to equalize them all up 

to $4,000 a year, and that is as far as I am willing to go, and I should 

very much prefer that in doing that the Senate would also adopt the 

proposition, which I expect to offer next, that this shall have a prospective opemtion. 

Sir, we ha>e introduced a prospective feature into this bill, and the 

Senate came very near Toting it into a retrospective feature. If we 

make the bill prospective as to those officers who may be hereafter appointed by their kinspeople, why not make it prospective also in regard 

to the judges who shall have the benefit of this law? It is no discredit 

to a judge to say to him, "You can not get this salary while you hold 

the office that you took when it was paid only 3,500." . It is no discredit to a judge to say to him, "If you want to get the increased com- pensation you must resign and take t.he chances of a reappointment 

and a reconfirmation." It might be unplen.sant to him if we should 

pa s a law of this kind and .he should refuse to resign, but that wonld 

be his own matter. 

Ur. President, the Senator from Mississippi who sits on my left 

[Ur. GEORGE], when a bill just like this, when this bill in fact, was before the Senate in 1 -l, with his aecustomed industry and carefulness, brought up the history of these appropriations, I think from the 

foundation of the Government, and sp:rea.d it upon the record of the 

Senate. I desire to have the Secretary read what the Senator from Missi ippi said on that occasion in order that it may go into the RECORD 

again to refresh the minds of Senators upon this question. I could 

add nothingtoitby comments upon it, and I certainly can not improve 

it by trying to state any additional facts. 

Mr. BUTLER. The Senator from Alabama says that he does not 

object to a motion to adjourn in order that he may conclude his remarks 

at the next sitting of the Senate. Therefore, if agreeable, I make the 

motion that the Senate do now adjourn. 

Mr. HOAR. I hope we may finish this bill. I understood the Senator 

from Alabama that when the extract was read he would have finished 

his speech. 

Mr. MORGAN. Very nearly. 

Mr. HOAR. I made the same request of him, intending to make a motion to adjourn if he desired. ~Ir. BUTLER. The Senator from Alabama has an amendment to 

offer, and I confess I should like to see that amendment. I have not 

as yet seen it. 

Mr. HOAR. I am afraid that what the Senator from South Carolina 

desires to see is not the amendment, but his dinner. [Laughter.] I 

recognize the force of the suggestion. 

Mr. BUTLER. I admit very frankly that I am very anxious to see 

my dinner, and at the &'tme time very anxious to see the amendment. 

I do not know which has the preponderance, but it is now after 5 

o'clock. 

Mr. HOAR. With the leave of the Senator I will conaent to an adjournment. . Indeed, I make the motion myself. 

The PRESIDING OFFICER. The Senator from Massachusetts moves that the Senate do now adjourn. 

The motion was agreed to; and (at 5o'clock and 8 minutes p.m.) the 

Senate adjoumed.