Birmingham state herald., 1896-07-30
TOMs REED BREAKS SILENCE
Easy to See His Wounds Still ', Smart.
TALKS ABOUT DECEPTION
ASide Lick at Bryan-Threadbare Arguments for the Tariff and the Gold
 Standard.

Alfred, Me, July 29.-The republican county convention was held here this aft ernoon to nominate county officers. The occasion was made unusual and interest ing from the fact that the county con- vention secured the presence of Hon. Thomas B. Reed and Curtis Guild, Jr., of Boston, and the convention ended in 8 great ratification meeting, Messrs. Reed and Guild addressing a gathering of seV- eral thousand people, who came from all quarters to hear the first public utter ance of MT. Reed since the national con- yention. The speakers were greeted with great enthusiasm.
 Mr. Reed spoke in part as follows:
 Two months ago no man of any stand ing would have risked his reputation as prophet by limiting the slightest doubt of republican success. Now there are those who tell us that all things have changed. This may be so, but to me 1t does not seem probab ble. It would be unwise, un- just and senseless to confound the dem ocratic organization with individual democrats.
 When stephen A. Douglass declared, after Sumter was fired on, that "thenes- forth there could be but two parties, pa trots and traitors" he won the respect even of his foes and an imperishable place in history. We shall certainly well come all such men today, not that they are republicans, for they will not be, but because they are patriots, for that they must be.
 There are some political orators who think if they can draw rose color in the picture it ought to convert continent What rosy picture we had painted for us in 1892. What millions we were to eX- pect. We were to sell in the dearest and buy in the cheapest market. We LOOK their word for it and here we are, and now the least credible part of these same gentlemen are Smearing the canvas with another picture, for which they want us to pay another four years, or, perhaps, ten of this nations life. Men deceived once are human; men deceived twice by the same men are fools. l am bound to say that the evil which has come to us by an unwise revision of the tariff has been greatly aggravated by one of it's ,consequences--our loss or rev enlie. The constant drain of the deficit, continually confounded with the redemp tion of gold, has so afflicted the imaglna- tion of our people that confidence can- not commence to be restored until our revenues equal our exports.
 Let us see what is proposed by those gentlemen who, within the last two months, have discovered new cure for all the ills flesh is heir to. Their remedy is the coinage of silver at 16 to l. What does that mean? Heretofore, whenever gold and silver have stood the ground,
  we tried to make gold and silver circu- late together we have always married them according to their market value. Today we find them not 16 to l, but 3l to l. and we are going. they say, to llft sil- yer to twice it's value not by the uni yersal sense of mankind, which alone makes values, but by the statute Of the United States, single-handed against the civilized world Why should the United States try to do this alone? If the de- monetzaton of silver is a disease at all it is a world disease. How can 1t be reached except by a world remedy? In ternational bimetalism I can under stand, but this driving out of gold and substitution of silver is only silver mono metallism for the United States. It is shifting from gold currency and civilized Europe and going over to silver and Mexico. Japan, India and China.
 If we are going to have dollar in ferior to what we have today what will be the effect of it? Higher prices, they say Not for everything. If you have $l00 in the savings bank today you can get 100 gold dollars from the bank. If this wild project succeeds and you are paid in silver you will get $10O, but they will be 50 60 or 70 cent dollars. If you have a pension, that must be scaled down. If you have a bond, that goes down, too. What you buy will go up. Will wages go up, too? Wages during greenback times measured in gold did not go up as other things did They went part way, but not all the way up, and were very slow about that.
 What this. country needs is capital from abroad.
 In the United States are millions of square miles and 75,000,000 people and undeveloped riches without stint. But there is not capital enough to keep 75,- 100000 people at work We are most prosperous when the 75. 1000, ,000 are all al work, and when that happens we borrow