Page:Speeches, correspondence and political papers of Carl Schurz, Volume 2.djvu/536

516 also, as every other Senator knows, that if I had to invest $100,000 to-day, with the prospect of an inflation of our currency, that $100,000 to be paid back to me in two or three years, when the premium on gold may not be 10 per cent. but 50 per cent., I would be likely to lose nearly one-half of my capital, however good the security might have been on which that capital was invested.

I would never hesitate to tell Europeans, “Send as much money as you can raise to aid us in developing our resources and to profit by it yourselves,” as soon as our monetary system is such as to give them reasonable security that when the loans fall due they will get the same value back which they invested.

Now let me tell the Senator from Pennsylvania I was in Europe last year, and the people there have begun to understand this thing as well as we do. We must not indulge in the delusion that foreign capitalists will be eager to run the risks which a fluctuating currency imposes upon them; and nothing is more natural than that, while we have that currency, many investments of European money are withheld which otherwise we might expect. In this respect the character of our currency must necessarily inflict a very serious injury upon us.

Mr. . Will the Senator allow me to interrupt him again?

Mr. . Certainly.

Mr. . The Senator from Missouri stated a special case of a German friend of his who said he had two or three hundred thousand dollars which he desired to send here to invest in mortgages. Mortgages mean the security of real estate, on which he was told he could get 8 or 10 per cent. Now I want to confine the Senator to that special case. I do not believe any security in the world can be better than that, and no citizen of the United States, no subject of Great Britain, or of any other