The Indianapolis journal. [volume] (Indianapolis [Ind.]) 1867-1904, 1896-09-03

silver had been demonetized nine months
before. were members of that Forty-thlrd
Congress. Mr.. Bland was in the House,
Messrs. Jones and Stewart were members
of the Senate. If the characterization act
that the conspirators would keep very
mum on the subject. Yet Immediately
upon the assembling of Congress there was
distributed the report of the director OF the
mint. dated Nov. l, 1873, in which, under the
headline. History of the Coinage, refer
ring TO the act of Feb. Il. he says: The
coinage act. in effect. abolished the silver
dollar of 4l21a grains Troy and declared the
gold dollar of 25:S grains; nine,
thus legally established gold as the
sole standard or measure of value Again,
ucofF me 9eadlng. IN large capltaf 1Stters.
Silver Subsidiary speaking OF the expert
ence with silver. he says: In view of the
foregoing facts, it is evident that Congress
acted wisely in establishing gold as the
sole standard of value" Not a word of pro-
test from the silver triumvirate! Not an
Of SURPRISED!
the Treasury, Mr.. Richardson. transmitted
deeming the worn silver coins, he says:
This is done in other countries which,
IKE ours, have adopted the gold standard
and deTnonetized silver" Again no pro-
test. 1t must be that this
Forty-third Congress was p~assionately in
terested in the subjects of currdlcy. and
finance. The questions which agitated the
public mimi were the of specie
payments. free banking and greenback in
f1atlon. The debates covered hundreds of
pages. No one can read them without
realizing that. beyond question, every one
monetary basis. on Dec. 49,, 1873, Sem
ator Morton. of Indiana, speaking of the
RESUMPTION Of specie said: u
that we are bound to come back to-" On
Jan. 13, 1874, Senator F'relnghuysen; of
New Jersey, said: The world standard of
value is gold, and every Senator knows it."
On January IA Senator Schurz said: The
inscription of the legal tender note is:
The United States will nav to the bearer
one dollar We all agree that it means
one dollar in gold coin of the United
tor. Senator Sherman, said: AT the Paris
Monetary Congress, held in 1861, which [
twenty nations represented agreed to rec
ommend gold alone as the standard of
value. TIL United States and nearly all
the commercial nations have adopted this
standard"
Is it reasonable to suppose that. in the
face Of such reports and speeches, "a live
man could have occupied his seat in the
House or Senate of that year without
knowing that silver had been demonetiZed?
And when such men tell us that they did
not discover it until some years thereafter,
are we not prompted to lose all patience
and to exclaim, with Falstaff: Lord, Lord,
how this world is given to lying!'
But now let me quote very briefly from
the remarkable speeches of Senators Stew
1874. Mr.. Stewart said: There is nothing
so satisfactory as the real measure Of
is the universal standard of the world.
Every one knows what a dollar in gold is
worth On June IL, 1874, referring. doubt
less, TO the Paris conference, he says: You
must come to the same conclusion that all
other people have, that gold is recognized
as the universal standard of value" on
April 1. 1874, Senator Jones said: L believe
the sooner we come down to a purely gold
standard the better it will be for the coun-
try Did any country ever accumulate
wealth, achieve greatness or attain high
civilization without a standard of value?
And what but gold could be that stand
ard? " Gold is so exact q measure OF
human effort that when it is exclusively
used as money. it teaches the very habit
of honesty" And 50 on, in golden rhap-
sody, paragraph after paragraph!
Two years passed by. The Forty-fourth
1876, Senator Jones delivered a speech in
the Senate covering thirty pages of the
Congressional Record. 1t was the most
coinage of silver. That speech IS the sill
Yer Koran from which the faithful have
quoted ever since. 1t shows d startling
Transformation in the opinions of Senator
Jones. He says: $50 far as SteadineSS is
concerned, gold does not deserve to be used
wildly fluctuating, ruinously unsteady
metal is what the fedgelings of political
v%entions and the numerous dupes OF Lom-
bard street would divorce from its natural
eo-InPie m silver ana n na tstd Tor not a t S9Ie
he makes no charge. OF a conspiracy" OF
1873. He says it Was "a wrong committed,
no doubt, unWittingly. 1t was a mere ca
price of legislation"
WHO THE MEN WE'RE.
That speech gave birth to the silver
Mr.. Stewart was not a member
of the Senate at the time, but. as evil
denced subsequently,, he endorsed every
word of that speech. Is it not self-evident
that something must have happened in
those two years, between April, 1874, and
April, 1876. which touched these two men
very closely, in order to have Produced
such a revolution in their opinions? h
it? Who were these men? They were
both Senators from Nevada. William M.
Stewart was the paid attorney of the prin-
cipal owners of the Comstock mines. His
professional income was estimated at $2N,-
600. The leading journal of Nevada said
of him: He was endowed by nature with
a faculty of imposing the sublimest alb
John p. Jones had been the SUI
perintendent of the Crown Point mine, To-
stock of that mine was selling from
81 to ST per STARE, Mr.; Jones and
. Mr.. Hayward bought in the controlling
By May, 1871. they owned over
fve-sixths of the entire capital stock. The
mine had suddenly Struck it rich, and by
May, 1872, the shares had risen to a market
price of 1,S25 per share. BY the end of 1875
the Crown Point had netted over II ,500,0 900:
But a change was coming over many or
were being exhausted. The Crown
Point Produced 81, 900, coo less in 1919 than In
1874. Before the close OF that year the mar
ket value of the stock had fallen to $2i.
During the same period, however, another
ominous change was preparing. These
mines were rich in silver. The silver prod
uct of the Crown Point mine for 1874 was
over "a, ZOO. 900. The value of the silver prod
net Of the State of Nevada had risen from
s17. 900. 600 in 1870 to SIS, 900, 900 in 1915. The
Nevada gold production in 1875 was only
So. 600, 900. In April, 1874, when Mr.. Jones
made his enthusiastic gold-standard speech,
silver was still worth $1.29 an ounce. 1t
facilitated somewhat. but at the close of
the year its price still stood at SIPS. In
1915 the price had declined very slowly to an
average of $1.24 per ounce; but in the first
downward at a rate which Rad been I'M
oaralleled in modern times. BY March, 1876,
the ounce price had declined to $1.10. That
price represented q decline of over IA per
,ent.-an annual loss to the Crown Point
mine of over $500. 900, based on the produc-
ton of 1874, and an annual loss to the Ne
yada mine owners of over $4,000. 600. OF
mines on the ComStock lode. which
had paid over $47. 900, 900 in dividends, not
lne-including the Crown Point-paid a
after April, 1876; and it was in
hat very month that the great silver speech
of Senator Jones was delivered.
Is it not as clear as noon-dny that
American political silver child
born in the COnnstOck bed and
it was begotten by greed and
selfish ra2acity:
I would not accuse these gentle
men of the slightest lack of sin
cerity. but as Mr.. Bryan SO aptly ex-
pressed it in his New York speech: so
ong as human nature remains as it is
will aluyaxG he danger moro or loss