Page:Speeches, correspondence and political papers of Carl Schurz, Volume 2.djvu/551

Rh what are you doing to those poor people; what are you doing with their twelve hundred millions of money? Inflate the currency, and by inflation depreciate it, and you will diminish the value of these twelve hundred millions 10, 20, 30 per cent. And now boast of being the friends of the poor while you advocate a policy that will rob the poor in the land of so large a proportion of their hard-earned property.

When looking at the scheme advocated here to relieve distress and to revive prosperity, one might almost believe that gentlemen with the most serious faces were carrying on a game of cruel mockery with those who look up to us for guidance and aid. If they ask for bread, I entreat Senators do not give them a stone! If you do not know how to aid them, at least do not deceive them; do not impose upon their credulity by offering to them as a remedy for their ills the continuance and extension of a money system which, wherever it has been tried, has always turned all social and economic movements into a game of chance and overreaching, in which always those lose most who have least to lose.

But we are told again and again that the people are demanding inflation, and the Senator from Indiana never grows tired of saying that he thinks his people think they understand this business, and they want inflation and nothing else.

But when you tell me that the American people want inflation, I boldly deny it. The American people are an enlightened and an honest people, and if for a little while they may be led astray by a taking catchword, they will soon recover their sound senses and show that they know what is honest as well as what is prudent. I have seen and heard this kind of thing before.

About seven or eight years ago some politicians thought it would be a very popular idea to repudiate our duty to