Birmingham state herald., 1895-10-11
THE SECRETARY OF THE NAVY.

most pleasant ana sacred nlOnuIneHlS. Courtly in manner sincere and honest In character, catholic in patriotism, he stands a noble specimen of manhood and worthy the confidence and admiration of all true Alabamians.
 He comes to debate with his people most important public question, and he has received from all parties and fac tions most respectful attention. He has upon the one question which now d. vides the Democratic camp been the most intelligent and consistent of all those representatives of the South who now in- dorse his views, but even his record fails to convince the people that it would be we'll to depart from the bimetallic stand ard of money established by our fathers through so many decades of American history, and his conservative speeches, plausible as they are, utterly fail to sug- gest any intelligent plan by which an ad- equate currency as safe as free silver can be established in it's place. Colonel Her bert has a right to refer to his speech of April 8, 1886, in Congress, in which he held that 1t would be dangerous to the currency to go beyond the Bland bill In the coinage of silver. At that day he stood alone upon that question among our Alabama Congressmen, almost alone among the. Representatives from the South. Upon that speech he predlcates. his present attitude. There is a fatal gap, however, between his argument of that day and his opinions of today. In that speech he said:
 The present distress of Europe re- suits from the demonstration of silver there and the scarcity of gold
 And so the friends of remonetization of silver now say that the distress which has prevailed throughout Europe ana the United States for the past years IS the continuation of what Colonel Herbert saw in 1886, and that it has resulted rom the demonetization of silver and the lihpos-- sbility for gold to do the worK neeoeo by commerce. Time has not changed the conditions. He spoke as a pimetaiist in 1886. an advocate of the double staho- ard, holding gold and silver as equahy sovereign and one not as subsidiary 10 the other.t Today he says that he IS bimetalust. but he means that silver shall be regarded as paper money ana subordinate to and measured by gold This is not what he meant by bimetalhsm
 
 silver dollar, no matter what it's commef- cial value might be, as a sovereign stanu- ard dollar, equal in all respects to eoiu' Said he:
 To my mind there is no argument III the Reclamation on this noor aoou. s,s, dishonest dollar. If the dollar IS disnol, ao est because It's bullion is equal to put oo cents in gold, then our half dollar IS as honest because it equals but 37 cents Ill gold, and the nickel is dishonest because it's bullion value is but 7-lO or l cent
 To his mind it was apparent that the commercial value of the silver coin nao little to do with its monetary value. inc commercial value would rise to the coin value the moment free coinage was adopted. He said
 'The truth is coin is worth just what it will buy. If silver dollar VIII pur chase, as it does, just as much as soia dollar it does equally honest Worh anu is just as honest coin as the yellow doi- lar. The fact that the silver dollar has for seven years maintained itself side by side with gold is refutation of the fun damental proposition of the monometal- lists that the State can weigh and meas ure coin, but that it Is powerless in any manner or to any extent whatever to af- feet its value.
 Here he laid down the fundamentai truth upon which this whole contention rests It is admitted by every intelligent mind that the money value and the com- mercial value should approximate as nearly as possible, and we assume 1t IS true that no silver advocate would at tempt to place the silver dollar upon an unfair basis. We want parity, and to preserve that parity equality or value is desirable. The difference be- tween the gold man and the bimetallist is that the former contend that remoneti- zation will not lift the commercial value of silver to that of gold at the ratio of 16 to 1, and the latter contend that it has heretofore done so, and, therefore, will do so again. The Latin union main- tained the parity at 151a to for long period. France maintained it for seven- ty years. The United States maintained it at 15 to 1 and 16 to 1 for over seventy years.
 Against these facts, which are worth more than arguments, Colonel Herbert sets the demonetization of silver by the Latin union by Germany and by India. But as opposed to the secretary's view we set the further facts that the balance of our trade is always in our favor with gold standard nations and against us with bimetallist nations. In other words we have the opportunity to win gold from the geld standard nations and send silver to the silver-using nations. In such conditions there could be no de- pletion of our gold stock and no super abundance of our silver stock. We fur ther set against the seoretary's present views the fact that silver is used as standard money by the very people to whom we wish to sell our products Eu- rope takes from us only what she is com pelled to take, our raw cotton and our grain and oils, but the silver nations by sympathy and monetary alliance could be induced to take from us a very large part of the manufactured products with which Great Britain, France and Ger many now flood the Central and South American states and Japan and China. Besides this, it is our firm conviction that the moment silver is remonetized in this country the nations of Europe will be compelled to follow our example,