The watchman and southron. [volume] (Sumter, S.C.) 1881-1930, 1895-05-29
rold to silver. The preservation Of

measure of value upon which, the
contracts Of the people have been
made and the wages OF labor have
been adjusted is the vital thing Ia.
voIved in this controversy, for II the
standard is preserved everybody is
willing to use and will use every
available form of currency that can
be kept to it in value AS long as
there appeared to be reasonable
ground for the hope that silver could
be raised TO parity of value with
gold at the ratio Of Ii t, by the
separate y action Of the United States,
| was willing to make the expert
ment, but | was never willing to
make it by legislation providing for
the free and unlimited coinage Of
silver at that or any other ratio. The
only speech l ever made in Congress
on this subject was delivered In the
uouse of Representatives more than
seventeen years ago, at time when
the value of the bullion contained in
a silver dollar was only about seven
cents less than the value of the bull
lion contained in a gold dollar, and
I. together with many other oppo.
nents of free coinage, believing that
a restoration of silver to our mints
would bring it TO parity with gold,
supported a measure providing for
the limited coinage of silver dollars
on government account, not on &C.
count of private individuals and cor
porations as is now proposed Fif
teen years experience, however,
demonstrated that those Of us who
believed in 1878 that larger use OF
silver by the United States would
enhance its price or value were mis-
taken Instead of increasing the
price of silver, 1t continued to fall
will. greater rapidity ttan before,
Notwithstanding all the efforts made
by our government to uphold it, until
now the bullion contained in silver
dollar is worth only about half as
much as the bullion contained in
gold dollar.
"The conditions have entirely
changed since 1878, and ! do not
understand that even our free coin.
age friends in Kentucky or elsewhere
now contend that any Legislation by
this country alone could place silver
on parity with gold at the ratio Of
l6 to l. On the contrary, they
insist that the free and unlimited
coinage of silver at that ratio would
give the people cheap money, and |
agree with them that it would have
that effect, but it would not be cheap
money if it were equal in value to
gold. The speech made by me on
the occasion referred to has been
garbled and twisted and perverted in
and out of Congress during the past
two years with malicious ingenuity
which has scarcely ever been
equalled in the discussion of pub
lie question, and yet no one has
ever ventured to make the direct
assertion that it contained single
word in favor of the free coinage Of
silver. 1t was. in fact, made in op-
position to free coinage and in sup
port of the Senate substitute for a
free coinage bill. as can be seen by
any one who will take the trouble TO
read it. Certain sentences, in which
denounced in strong language the
attempt to destroy silver as a
money metal, have been separated
from their context and quoted again
in Congress, on the stump, and in
newspapers by men who never read
the speech and who appear wholly
incapable of understanding the diff,
ference between the total disuse Of
that metal as money and its free and
unlimited coinage at the public ex-
pense for the benefit of private indi-
vlduals and corporations have a
copy of the speech here, but will
not detain you by reading extracts
from it to show what MY position
was, because any gentleman who
desires to do so can find it in full in
the appendix to the Congressional
Record for the second session of the
Forty fifth Congress. Some Of the
opinions then expressed have been
modified and some of them have
been changed altogether by subse-
quent events and by more thorough
investigation Of the subjects to
which they related but on the
question Of free coinage my couvic-
tions have never been shaken for
moment.
The Cuban War.
SANTIAGO DE CuBA, May 9, via Key