The news & observer. [volume] (Raleigh, N.C.) 1894-current, 1902-07-06

Senator Jones is best known to the
general public for his speeches on the
silver questionable first made in 1878
and the other in 1899. The latter con-
sumed seven sittings of the Senate in
its delivery, fills ninety nine pages of
the Congressional Record, and states the
whole case for fiat money. Had he at
tempted to argue the case as Adam
Smith or John Marshall argued ques-
lions, probably his speech would have
been as stupid as Coin Harvey's book
He was assailing the conclusions of Sir
Isaac Newton and John Locke, chat a
piece of metal with the kings head on
it was a commodity of which the price
was governed by the same laws which
govern the price of a piece of metal
fashioned into spoon Or a buckle, and
that it was no more in the power of
Parliament to make the kingdom richer
by calling crown a pound than to make
the kingdom larger by calling a furlong a
mile" We are told that all the wishes
and all the prayers in the world will
not fill the Arno nor turn a plum into an
orange, no more will speeches in Con-
gress make forty-seven cents 100 cents;
but if that had been possible Jones is
the one silver advocate who would have
accomplished it. His speech was the
genesis of 10000 silver speeches, and
even now, when the policy is res adju
dicata, it will repay the perusal. Any
intelligent mind can get profit out of it.
1t was on August 80, 1893, that John
| Sherman turned on his foes and answered
| the charges of twenty years 1t was a
grand speech-certainly the greatest
Sherman ever delivered He gave a COM
| plete history of the legislation known as
1.-The crime of 1873" and it is only the
| simple truth to say that he covered his
enemies with confusion If the construc-
tive statesmen of America were gathered
in single group, Sherman would be one
| of the very conspicuous. He restored the
| public credit, and made the wage of en-
| deavor a dollar in fact, as it was in
| name. 1t was a very difficult under
| taking and the method employed by him
was as simple as it was successful. He
was the oppOrtunist always-so was
Lincoln. Neither had any sentimental
vagaries and maudlin vaporings touch
ing slavery, and they did more to destroy
it than a regiment of Wendell Phillipses
and Owen LoveiOyS. When he lost the
Speakership he turned his attention to
the Senate, and while he was inferior to
| Fessenden in intellect, inferior to Sum-
ner in knowledge, and possibly inferior to
| Morton in virility, he accomplished more
| than all of them. There were twenty
years during which the Senate merely
turned John Shermans thoughts into the
| law of the land.
| Sherman caused the silver law which
| bore his name to be enacted, because it
relieved a Republican President of the
responsibility of a veto of a free silver
| BILL The great business interests of the
country resented that sort of thing and
| put a man in the White House who
would never shrink from such a respon
sibility. That is what elected Grover
| Cleveland in 1892 But Sherman was
right. Had Harrison vetoed free silver
bill, the coinage issue would have become
paramount -four years sooner than it did,
| and Is to would have prevailed. 1t re-
quired two campaigns of education to
| defect silver. They said Sherman was a