Birmingham state herald., 1896-09-09
modification the entire platform of 1884

l democratic party on this subject from l 1886 to 1888, a period of fifty-two years, | was unequivocally for honest money, the | free gold and silver coinage of the con- stitution and paper convertible into coin, and against bank notes of any kind, is- sued to circulate as money, and especial | ly against national banks, as dangerous to republican institutions and the liber- | ties of the people.
 Somewhere between 1888 and 1892 a new kind of money became popular in some | places. and new name, sound money"
 was coined for it. The special peculiari- | ty of this money is to grow, like fun gus, by feeding on other things when | idle and when everything else is rela- | lively decreasing. It is neither honest 1 money nor the coinage of the constitu- | tion. Among it's devotees Mir. Cleveland
 enrolled himself, and he and his allies | in it's worship managed to divert the par | ty aside from it's ancient paths, and in- | veigled it in 1892 into making, for the
 first time, a declaration of dubious mean- | ing, which was in fact, if not in intention, | a deception.
 | The platform in 1892 denounced the | whole Sherman act-not merely It's pur chasing clause-as "cowardly make shift" as it was indeed, for free coinage | of silver and added: "We hold to the use of both gold and silver as the standard | money of the country, and to the coinage of both gold and silver, without discrimi- mating against either metal or charge for mintage." Thus far they went on the
 old ways The departure from them was in the pretense of preserving the | parity" Of the dollar unit of coinage | of both metals and the parity" of both | metals, no intention of doing which was ever entertained by those who wrote the clause, which, in fact, has been used to prevent and defeat what the first clause professed to desire. Still, even with. this, there was the old demand that
 "afl paper currency shall be kept at par
 with and kept redeemable in such coin"
 Such coin" are the words. What coin?
 Both gold and silver as the standard money of the country are the very
 words used not gold nor silver alone,
 but gold and silver both. No honest man, believing in the honesty and pa
 triotism of the democratic party and cognizant of it's history, could construe this as meaning anything but the free coinage and use of both gold and silver.
 The country did so construe it, and so do- ing voted for it and it's candidates. The democracy were then deceived by their trusted leaders. In 1896, bent on
 being no more deceived in that way, they
 put in their platform, not only an ex-
 press, imperative demand for free coin
 age at ratio of IS to 1 of both silver and
 gold, but the following, which hardly diff far in in iC. from it's declarations from 1886 to 1860: Congress alone has the power to coin and issue money, and President Jackson declared that this power could not be delegated to corporations or individuals. We therefore denounce the issuance of notes intended to circulate as money by national banks as in derogation of the constitution, and we demand that all pa- per which is made legal tender for pub lie and private debts, or which is re- ceivable for dues to the United States, shall be issued by the government of the | United States, and shall be redeemable 1 in coin."
 Here is no demand that any paper
 money shall be issued by anyone, as is
 by some pretended. It is a demand, sim | ply and no more, that all paper when l made a legal tender for debts public or
 private, or for dues to the United States, l Siiclli bE i'SuCd py thC SoNtiHIHCHl Ol the United States, and shall be redeem | able in coin.
 | Now, the shams who got together in | Indianapolis few days since find this | declaration of the Chicago platform un- | democratic, as well as all the rest of it. Ignorant of what true democracy has
 been and is, they claim that gold alone
 is fit for money in large transactions l impulse of their masters, the national banks and bondholders, they announce l themselves opposed to free coinage of
 silver, to all issues of paper currency by | the government, and dump themselves, | all four feet on a declaration for perpet-
 uating national banks and their monop- 1 oly and domination. Here this:
 I've assert the necessity of such intel | ligent currency reform as will confine | the government to it's legitimate func- | tions. completely separated from the | banking business, and afford to all sec | tions of our country uniform, safe and
 elastic bank currency. under govern | ment supervision measured in volume | by the needs of business"
 "A uniform, safe and elastic bank cur
 rencyw Jefferson declared national
 banks more dangerous than standing
 
 against them, but, according to these
 Hannacrats, democracy is none else than
 a government over the people by the | banks and for the banks.
 l Said Mr. Jefferson:
 | Bank paper must be suppressed and l the circulation must be restored to the 1 nation, to whom it belongs.
 1 The power to issue money should be | taken from the banks and restored to | congress and the people.
 1 II sincerely believe that banking es- | tablishments are more dangerous than | standing armies.
 'I am not among those who fear the | people. They, and not the rich, are our | dependence for continued freedom, and to | preserve their independence we must not
 let our rulers load us with perpetual | debt.'
 For these and like utterances Jeffer-
 son was denounced by federalsts, tories
 and the tools of the money power as
 jacobn and agrarian. For identical doc l larations in 1896 the democratic party is
 charged by the same sort of creatures l with favoring anarchy, repudiation and I I.a.~