Page:Speeches, correspondence and political papers of Carl Schurz, Volume 5.djvu/310

286 been before, and higher than it is in any other country except one? You might as well ascribe our civil war to the great comet of 1811.

Permit me here a word on what, in my humble opinion, is the true source of the discontent so far as it is entertained by honest men. The new economic conditions somewhat suddenly created in our time by the vast improvements in the means and methods of production and transportation have surprised, puzzled and perplexed the minds of many well-meaning people. They became alarmed at the naturally and necessarily following decline of the prices of agricultural as well as industrial products and at the general tendency of profits toward a minimum. Some of them found it very hard to adapt their ways of thinking and doing to the new state of things. They disliked to see in all the change a natural evolution of permanent effect. They easily yielded to the impression that there must be something wrong at the bottom of it all, some conspiracy of wealth, some hocus-pocus with the money of the country, just as once every cattle disease was ascribed to witchcraft, and as even in this century in some places the appearance of cholera was attributed to a conspiracy of the Jews to poison the wells. Honest people in that state of mind fell an easy prey to the equally honest financial quack as well as to the dishonest demagogue. Thus they were readily persuaded that the so-called demonetization of silver was the true cause of their troubles, and that the free coinage of silver would be the true remedy, while thorough inquiry and calm reasoning would have convinced them that the true cause is the progress of civilization in production and transportation, and that the true remedy can be found only in the adaptation of our schemes of husbandry and our business methods to that progress. This is proved by actual experience. There are a great many prosperous farmers