The Salt Lake herald. [volume] (Salt Lake City [Utah]) 1870-1909, 1895-06-17

shortage, and there would probably
be but half a crop of wheat grown in
our country, when Armour and
CounSGlman were able to make a
corner on wheat and send it up
cents a bushel in less than five min
utes. This is gambling. No spas
modic improvement of single article
here and there will ever enable us to
pay the billions of dollars of debt we
owe abroad.
There must be a general, a perma-
nent advance of prices all along the
line. You must put the products of
labor of the farm and workshop back
upon the basis where the farmer is
not compelled, as he is today, to sell
the products of his farm in the open
markets of the world at prices less
than the cost of production. This is
our only chance for the payment of
this debt. 1 submit it to you not as
financiers, not as specialists, but as
men of good, hard, common sense,
and tell me. my countrymen, if the
world itself does not produce enough
gold each year to pay the interest on
your debt if you had it all, and you
are not even the first gold-producing
nation of the earth-but If we had all
the gold, and that is not enough to
pay the interest on the debt abroad,
how in Gods name can we ever pay
the principal of the debt if that is to
be paid in gold alone? You can not
do it; it is impossible.
They tell us of the dire calamities
that are to befall the American peo-
pie if we pass an unlimited free coin
age law AS l have already told you,
we have heard those threats before
They never were fulfilled. Everything
happened under the act of 1878 that
Sherman never predicted would come,
and not a blessed thing ever did hap
pen that he told us was coming. But
thew tell us that dire calamitleS are to
befall us if we pass the law restoring
silver money to the system OF THIS
country l do not believe 1T. But
suppose for the sake of argument,
that it is true. 1 answer and say to
the secretary and to all the other ad-
vocates of gold who think with him.
more trouble has already come, more
suffering has already been imposed.
more poverty has already been en-
dured. as the result of the sherman
law of 1873. than even you claim can
be brought upon the American peo-
pie by the passage of a silver BILL
An American System Needed.
But some of these gentlemen tell us.
'.Hold still, keep to the financial sys-
tenn you have until Europe. and es-
pecially England, shall grant you per-
nilsson to put silver back" No, no.
The issue is presented plain and fair.
Shall we, my countrymen. have a
foreign system? shall we have an Eng
lish system, or an American system, a
system of our own? When this
country had only four millions of PEG
pie in it you whipped Great Britain
and established your own system
What sort of sons of honored sires dis
grace this continent today if seventy
million OF freemen dare not undertake
to main.aain a system of their own?
What would your forefathers have
said if the proposition had been made
to them when, flushed with victory
over the British armies. the PROPOSE
ton was made to them to tamely hold
out their wrists and have the shackles
of financial servitude yiveted anew
My countrymen, this is the issue. It
cannot be gotten around You have to
meet it in this campaign and the