Page:Speeches, correspondence and political papers of Carl Schurz, Volume 3.djvu/230

204 is making away with the cash, instinctively unite in a feverish run upon the counter, so you must not be surprised if, in the general alarm about threatening dishonesty, you see the securities, not only of the Government, but of our private corporations also, flung by the hundreds of millions into the market, producing a crash more fearful and destructive, and a paralysis more deadly to all our economic interests than any people on earth can remember for generations past.

That, fellow-citizens, is the feast to which the advocates of inflation invite you so blandly. That is the revival of business, that is the wonderful development of prosperity which they promise you in such glowing colors. That is the drift of the policy which is to set our factories whirling, to make our farmers rich, to give our laborers abundance of work and unprecedented wages, to put bread into the mouths of the needy. Open your eyes to the truth, and you find nothing but a prospect of bankruptcy more general, and paralysis more fatal, than ever before—although it may be a small consolation to the honest men of the country to see the reckless speculators, who, at the expense of all, sought to enrich themselves, engulfed with them in the same ruin.

But I ask you, with all candor and soberness, business men, farmers, laborers, honest and patriotic citizens of all classes, is it not time to stop such wanton schemes of mischief? Can we be so blind as not to see its tendency, or, seeing it, so reckless as to run so terrible a risk? I know as well as anybody that business is depressed and that many are grievously suffering. But does not the common-sense of mankind, does not the accumulated experience of history, does not our own recollection of past events clearly point out the road of improvement and relief?

There being an abundance of money in the banks that