Page:Speeches, correspondence and political papers of Carl Schurz, Volume 3.djvu/449

Rh to speak to them on the financial questions before the people. I thank you sincerely for the confidence which that invitation implies, and I respond to it with a deep sense of responsibility. The remarks I am going to make to-night will be, in a certain sense, supplementary to those I made here three years ago. I then sketched the disastrous consequences which a policy of currency inflation would bring after it to the merchant, the manufacturer, the business man generally, as well as the farmer and the laborer for wages, and especially the latter. At that time the people of Ohio, in their State election, administered a wise and noble rebuke to the inflation movement then attempted by the Democratic party of this State. It was to be hoped that this rebuke would sufficiently check that movement, to prevent its repetition. That hope has been disappointed. Indeed, both political parties in their National Conventions of 1876 pronounced in favor of an early resumption of specie payments, and thus seemed to be agreed as to the object to be attained, and the preparations for resumption have so far proceeded that it is within immediate reach. But while we are within a hair's breadth of a final settlement of the vexed question, the inflation mania has broken out afresh, and it must be admitted that many well-meaning citizens, under the pressure of temporary distress, are honestly seeking for means of relief, and are tending toward conclusions which, in the opinion of those who think as I do, are fallacious, and fraught with great danger to the National honor as well as the public welfare.

To that class of honest and well-meaning citizens I shall respectfully address myself, and in doing so I shall, instead of making an effort at high-flown oratory, speak rather in the way of a straightforward, homely, common-sense talk.

From time immemorial, and in all countries, it has been