Page:Speeches, correspondence and political papers of Carl Schurz, Volume 2.djvu/512

492 have made themselves believe that an inflation of the currency will aid them in getting upon their feet again and accelerate their recuperation. I am strongly convinced that it will not, and I have already given some of my reasons. First, I have shown that an inflation of currency will stimulate general speculation, and that this speculation will so divert the currency from legitimate business that the latter, after the expansion, will not only not have a greater but a less proportion of it for its purposes than before; and secondly, inflation will still more depress the agricultural interest, which is the principal source of prosperity in the South as well as the West, than it is depressed now.

I made that argument before when I first had the honor to address the Senate on this subject. That argument has been attacked by several Senators; and I shall therefore restate it, and try to demonstrate its correctness still more clearly.

A considerable portion of some of the most important products of agriculture is exported, and the home price of the whole crop of those specific articles is regulated by the foreign market. That is a universally known and recognized fact. The prices ruling in the foreign market are, first, depressed by the free competition of the whole world; and, secondly, a specie standard prevailing there, they are not driven up by the inflation that has enhanced the prices of all other articles in this country. The farmer or the planter has, therefore, to sell these staple crops at the low prices regulated by the foreign market, while for all the necessaries he has to buy he pays the prices grown up to an exorbitant height, far beyond the premium on gold, by our home inflation. This was my original statement. The correctness of that statement, I say, has been questioned.

The Senator from Massachusetts on my left [Mr.