The San Francisco call. [volume] (San Francisco [Calif.]) 1895-1913, 1895-08-21

no introduction to a California audience,
and this was apparent enough to any one
who heard the applause that greeted the
rising of the Napa statesman.
Mr.. Estee started out in light vein. He
said it would be in bad taste for him to
begin now to talk back to a woman. For
thirty years he had been trying to edu-
cate himself not to talk back to a certain
little woman.
And the joke and the compliment over
Mr.. Estee said he considered he was adj
dressing not political body, but an indus
trial convention whose purpose was that
of economic education.
"Credit makes the stability of the Gov
eminent and vice versa. Credit is what is
wanted" said Mr.. Estee, land credit is the
child of confidence, and confidence the
child of prosperity. So prosperity is the one
thing we want and must have at all cost.
We want laws so framed that the masses
of the people will be prosperous, that no
man shall want honest labor and be I'M
able to find it, and no man, woman or
child go hungry or lily clad. How to
bring this about is the question. Now, it
is worse than nonsense to tell a hungry
people that this or that theory of govern
ment is wrong or right or that they have
been robbed by some law thirty years old.
The question is, how to remedy the evil.
This is what the hungry man wants to
hear.
'In three years the product of the farm
and factory have deprecated in value
nearly 80 per cent. Yet they tell us moth
ing is wrong, nothing the matter. And
they tell US, too, that it can't be the de-
monetization of silver that's responsible,
because silver has been demonetized these
twenty years. And SO it has, but I'll tell
you why we're just beginning to feel it
now. Heretofore our exports have ex-
ceeded our imports and we have kept the
money at home. Now different state of
affairs prevails and we begin to realize the
evils of our financial policy.
Last winter the administration of this
Government went to three bankers and
secured their protection of the National
treasury. Imagine three bankers protect
ing 100000 people, and imagine the
kind OF protection they would get! And
the three bankers made $100O0,OOO out of
their protection of us. They borrowed
$100,000,000 of US, sent it over to England,
and then the English bankers sold it back
to us at their own figures, and cleaned I'D
100000 on the transaction. That's the
kind OF protection against bankruptcy
we got
Now the redemption of greenbacks was
all right in its way-that is, the law pro-
viding for the redemption was sound.
That law said they should be paid in silver
and gold. How have they been paid? In
gold. We haven't obeyed that law. The
Government says that silver won't main
tain our credit abroad. Let us have some
credit at home and we will stand we'll
enough abroad. Let US make our laws for
our own people first and for the people
abroad afterward.
"And yet we do use silver. Everybody
uses silver in the ordinary transactions of
life. Why, when went to the Pennsyl-
vania station in the East to get my Sleep
ing-car accommodations home and tend
cred the agent two $40 gold pieces he made
me wait till he had sent messenger to the
bank to have them weighed. Oh, silver is
good enough for the smaller transactions
of life, good enough to pay the farmers for
bushel of wheat or dozen of eggs, but
when it comes to the bankers the,Wall-
street spectators in money, then we must
have sound money.
"a man said to me that the free coinage
of silver would drive the gold out of the
country. l told him it couldn't drive it
any faster than it is now going. 1t is
going now faster than we can borrow
it.
"Gold and silver is the money OF the
constitution, and so great constitutional
lawyer as Daniel Webster said that to de-
monetize either gold or silver would be I'M
constitutional"
When the applause that followed Mr..
Estee to his chair had subsidized Chairman