Page:Speeches, correspondence and political papers of Carl Schurz, Volume 5.djvu/304

280 and three years after the resumption of specie payments—the prices of the agricultural staples mentioned, being in most instances considerably above 1860, show absolutely no trace of any such effect as would have been produced upon them had a great and sudden change in the purchasing power of the money of the country taken place; that it would be childish to pretend that but for the act of 1873 those prices would be 100, or 50, or 25, or 10 per cent. higher, and that, therefore, all this talk about the gold dollar having become a 200-cent dollar, or a 150-cent dollar, or 125-cent dollar, is—pardon the expression—arrant nonsense. Since 1882 the price of wheat has, indeed, very much declined, although in 1891 it reached once more in New York $1.09, while corn sold in 1891 2, 3 and 4 cents higher than in 1879. But if the act of 1873, which, had it really enhanced the purchasing power of the dollar, would have done so promptly and uniformly, produced no such effect for nine years after its enactment, it would be absurd to say that it produces it twenty years after its enactment. Is not this clear?

If, however, there be somebody believing that in spite of these facts the demonetization of silver by the act of 1873 must in some mysterious way have done something to depress prices, I meet him with the affirmation that the silver dollar was practically demonetized long before 1873. To judge from the speeches of our free-coinage orators the American people must before 1873 have fairly wallowed in silver dollars. What is the fact? President Jefferson stopped the coinage of silver dollars in 1806. From 1783 to 1878, aside from fractional currency—which since 1853 was only limited legal tender—only about 8,000,000 of silver dollars were coined. They were so scarce that you would hardly ever see one except in a curiosity shop as a rare coin.

There was constant trouble with the legal ratio between