THE BATTALION.
15
will have to pay $1,800,000,000 in g’old or $3,600,000,000 in
silver.
They say coin silver free and unlimited in amount in
order that we may increase the amount of our money.
Free and unlimited coinage of silver in one year would
drive out $700,000,000 of gold and it would take 15 years
with our mints coining at the greatest possible rapidity to
restore it with silver money and then after we have once
more increased our money to $1,200,000,000, its value is
regulated by the intrinsic value of the metal it contains,
which is of less than 50 cents to a dollar. Thus after 15
years of coinage we would have only 1-2 as much as we
had to start with. Jefferson said: “Let us have a double
standard.” But he stopped the coinage of silver at the
beginning of his second administration. Hamilton said:
“Let us have a double standard, but if either is to pre
dominate, let it be the more costly metal.” Now which is
the more costly, gold or silver? If we take two equal
weights of gold and silver, gold is the more costly. And
again, if we compare the ratio of Hamilton’s time, which
was 15 to 1, with the ratio ofthe present time, which is 38 to
1, gold is the more costly still. The secretary of treasury
under Andrew Jackson said: “Let us have a gold stand
ard.” Even at that early time the thinking men of our
country had begun to see the necessity for a firm basis for
our money system.
In reply to the question: “What party did I vote for
in ’96 if I voted; and if I did not vote who would I have
voted for had I voted,” I answer that I would have voted