THE BATTALION.
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bill, Rockerfellow, and others, will invest their g-old in
foreign bullion and thereby double their money at every
investment. The silver bullion of Europe alone would be
sufficient to drive out all our gold, which would be done in
a marvelous short time, and then, like China and Mexico,
our money is worth only 50 per cent, of what it formerly
was, and who is benefited by it? All debts are immediate
ly scaled one-half. Eor example, if I borrow $10,000 from
you, and, after I have received the benefit of this money,
have a law passed that will depreciated the value of our
money 50 per cent., I would rob and steal from you an
amount of $5,000, and worse than that, I would be a thief
that could not be touched by law.
In the savings banks of the United States there are
4,777,000 depositors. The amount of money deposited is
$1,747,000,000. Pass the free and unlimited coinage of
silver act and you scale that indebtedness one-half, and
thus affect nearly 5,000,000 of our people. The building
and loan associations of this country owe their members
$450,000,000. Pass the free coinage measure, and you re
duce it one-half. The life insurance of this country out
standing January 1, 1899 was $618,000,000, scale that one-
half and you leavedesolate widows with their orphan child
ren. The bonded debt of the railways of the United
States is $6,000,000,000. If you introduce the free coinage
of silver you enable those railroads to pay that amount
with the equivalent of $3,000,000,000.
Who is benefited by the free coinage of silver? It is
evidently the debtor class. Is the debtor class the poorer
class? According to the above numbers, the debtor class