The representative. [volume] (St. Paul, Minn.) 1893-1901, 1893-10-11

WMcn ne cOulQ nave 0One IN twenty
words, and he purposely failed toydo'
this when he was questioned about
the bill in the senate. He also held
the bill back and had it passed with
out being read, and in that way pre-
vented congress, the president, or
or anyone else from learning that the
bill stopped silver coinage.
The bill had been planned by Mr..
Sherman at conspiracy convention
held by the creditor classes of Europe
at Paris in May, 1867, and he knew
this mode of procedure to be neceSsa
ry to get the bill through an Ameri-
can congress; for he knew the law
was not planned or made in the in
terest of the United States, but in
the interest of the creditor classes of
Western Europe, and very small
class of creditors in this country.
In order to show that this bill was
not fully discussed "until the read
ing public was tired of it," and not
even read to congress on it's final pas
sage, we refer to the following, cop
led from an editorial in the Chicago
Tribune of January 10Th, 1878, pa
per that is now laboring to put us on
gold basis:
"The clause in the consolidated
mint bill stopping the coinage of sill
yer dollars was furtively inserted /;
not one member of congress in fifty
knew of it,"
On December 9th, 1877, Murat
Halsted, formerly editor of the Gin
cinnati Commercial, published in the
New York Nation, over his own sig
nature, these words:
II have advertised in vain for
member of congress who can say that
he voted for the characterization of
silver knowing when he cast his vote
what it meant. [ have appealed to
the press for an editorial article pub
lished in the year 1873 or 1874 for or
against the change from the double
to the single standard: and the con-
cluSiOn is that no such article ap-
peared in any American paper
On the 18th of September, 1877,
Hon. w. S. Groesbeck made the fol-
lowing statement before the Ameri-
can Bankers association, then in ses-
sion in New York city:
"In 1873 and 1874 believe without
a single recommendation from the
dc ~
chambers of commerce, or from any
other direction, and when for the
first time, our public debt had be-
come heavy and burdensome, and
private Indebtedness was larger than
ever before, and we were in a state
of suspension upon the currency,
amounting to more than seven
hundred millions; in such an eXigen-
cy and with the knowledge that we
we're richer in mines of silver than
any nation on the globe, we threw
our silver away and set up gold
alone"
Senator VOORHEES, in his speech in
the senate in 1873 pictured the Sher-
man conspiracy against silver in
these words:
Throughout all the financial pan
les that have assailed this country
no man has ever been bold enough
to raise his hand to strike it down;
no man has ever dared to whisper of
a contemplated assault upon it, and
when the hour of it's danger and
obstruction drew nigh, when the
18th day of February, 1873, ap-
preached, the day of doom to the
American dollar, the dollar of our
fathers, how silent was the work of
the enemy! Not a sound, not a
American people that their favorite
money; that the greatest financial
contemplation and about to be &C
complished against their highest
and dearest rights! The tax payers
of the United States were no more
notified or consulted on this mo-
mentOus measure than the slaves
on southern plantation before the
war, when their master made up his
mind to increase their task, or to
change them from a corn to cotton
field. Never since the foundation
of this government has law of such
vital and tremendous import, or in
deed of any Importance at all crawled
into our statute books so furtively and
noiselessly as tbis. Its enactment there
was as completely unknown to the
people, and indeed to fOur-tifths of
congress itself as the presence of the
burglar in the house at midnight is
to the sleeping inmates.
These citations you can find col
lated in Vol. I, page $50 Congression-
al Record of the 45th Congress, and l
advise you to read them, and what
Blaine, Garfield, Beck, and host of
others who we're in that Congress
have said about the stealth with
which silver coinage was stopped;
and the letter of President Grant of
October 3rd, 1893, seven months after
he had signed this bill, in which he
says to the secretary of the mint, 81
wonder silver is not already coming
into the market to supply the de-
fciency in the circulating medium"