Morning journal and courier., 1892-06-01
THE SILVER BILL DEBATE.

The Discussion Begun in the Senate Against Free Coinage-He Defend,
 publican Party and His own Part fin 1t.
 WASHINGTON, May 31.-At 9 o'clock the calendar was laid aside and the bill tc provide for the free coinage of gold and silver was taken up.
 There were then about @ dozen senators on each side of the chamber, including MT. Hill on the democratic side.
 Mir. Sherman had been in his seat for the preceding half hour waiting for the bill to be taken up.
 Mir. Sherman prefaced his speech on the silver bill by saying that he did not regard it as partisan measure or as 8 political measure on which parties were likely to divide. It was largely local measure. There was no question to be compared with it in the importance of its effects on the business interests of the country. Five states were largely interested in the production of silver and were ably and zealously rep resented in the senate. The south seemed also to have caught something of the spirit exhibited by the mining states, because, not exactly free coinage of silver, but expansion of the currency, cheaper money, broader credit. It was also rep resented largely in the senate in favor of free coinage of silver. And so in other parts of the county. He-representing a state nearly central in population-had tested the sense of the people of Ohio and they, he believed, were by large majority (not only in the republican party, but in the democratic party) opposed to the it would degrade the body of the currency, reduce its purchasing power oue-third, destroy the bimetsllic system of the coun- try, and reduce the country to the single monetary standard of silver, measured at the rate of 371 grains to the dollar. He went on to defend the financial action of the republican party and his own part in it. Starting with the close of MT. Buchan- ans administration, he quoted from let ter written to himself as chairman of the committee on ways and means in the house by Mir. Dix, secretary of the treasury, showing that the country was threatened then with absolute financial collapse, and he described the measures taken to pro- vide means to carry on the war, incud- ing the issue of greenbscks, which "wild visionaries" now want to resort to again. In passing allusion to the national banking system NIT. Sherman said that these would soon pass away-not be- cause they were not the best banks in the world, but because the United States bonds on which they rested would be paid off. No man ever lost 8 single dollar by the failure of national bank, on its notes. Depositors had lost something here and there, but very little. The system, there fore, had fully justified itself.
 Coming to the dropping of the silver dollar from the coinage in 1873 and the substitution of the trade dollar for it, he said that it was done on the representa- tions and petition of the legislature of Cal ifornia-the people of that and the other silver mining states wanting to transport their silver to China. The total amount of silver dollars coined from the founda- tion of the government up to 1873 had been only little over eight million dol lars, and at that time the silver dollar was obsolete, dead and buried. No one wanted it. It was therefore unfair and unmanly to arraign the gentlemen who had charge of the bill which had demon etized silver. The only trouble about that law was that several senators were not as Wlse as the hlulSnty anu couIu not see ahead. If it had been known that silver was going to fall as rapidly as it did he would have kept the silver dollar and put it on the same footing as the fractional silver. Tho suspension ot silver coinage by the Latin union had given another blow to silver, and the increased produc- ton of silver had given it another blow. It was not true that he was unfriendly to silver.
 MT. Teller asked him whether he had supported the Blsnd-Allison bill.
 Mir. Sherman-There is no Bland Ali son bill. They took the ''Blsnd" out of it and only left the Allison" Laughter. I cannot permit the senator to give bad name to good measure.
 The question before the senate was the free coinage of silver.
 At this stage MT. Sherman yielded to a motion for adjournment, and the senate adiourned until tomorrow