Page:Speeches, correspondence and political papers of Carl Schurz, Volume 3.djvu/238

212 Does not your good sense tell you that thus your interests would be infinitely better secured, than by a currency which, by its treacherous fluctuations, makes you the helpless victim of chance?

But are you ever to have that true people's money again? Yes, if by a wise policy we resolutely work toward specie resumption. Then in a few years. But surely not for a long while, if the schemes of the inflationists prevail. In that case you will get it only when, after years of struggle and suffering, by an excessive increase of the currency—in a universal crash—the whole system will have broken down, when every paper dollar will have become worthless, when all you now possess will have been swept away, and when you are then called upon to begin again with nothing, and earn once more your first dollar. Do you like that prospect?

Indeed, while I can understand how the gambling speculator, who finds it profitable to fish in troubled waters and who makes his gains from other people's losses, should be in favor of inflation, it is utterly amazing to me how the working man, all of whose material interests are bound up in honest money, could ever be prevailed upon to listen a single moment to the treacherous doctrines that would deliver him bound hand and foot into the meshes of a system which in its very nature is robbery itself. Let me tell the laboring men that they have no more heartless enemies than those pretended friends, who, with artful catchwords playing upon their credulity, seek to make them believe that they possess the secret of alchemy with which to create wealth out of nothing, and with that nothing to make those happy who serve their purposes. If their schemes, unfortunately, should prevail, then the time will surely come for their poor victims to curse the day when they foolishly followed such treacherous counsel and curse the men who administered it.