Page:Speeches, correspondence and political papers of Carl Schurz, Volume 5.djvu/311

Rh to-day in spite of low prices. They are farming farmers. There are others who do not prosper. They are largely the political farmers. The reason is this: The successful farming farmers have been studying the most economical methods of production, the most profitable varieties of farm products and the changing opportunities offered by the market, while the political farmers have studied Coin's Financial School and the question how free coinage would give them double prices for what they would have raised if their financial studies had not absorbed so much of their time and attention.

Candid reflection will convince them that the remedy urged by the free-coinage men, being based upon a false diagnosis, will not only not cure but immensely aggravate the trouble complained of. It is a case of jumping from the frying-pan into the fire. The Bryan remedy demands a radical change of the basis of our monetary system. What is that system? The currency of the United States consists of gold coin, silver coin and five different kinds of paper money, these all redeemable in gold or in some roundabout way sustained by gold. Besides, there is the national bank currency, redeemable by the banks in greenbacks, the greenbacks then being redeemable in gold. It is true, nominally, various descriptions of our paper money, the greenbacks and the Treasury notes, are redeemable in “coin,” meaning, literally, gold or silver, at the discretion of the Government, but practically they have always been held to be redeemable in gold if the holder presenting them for redemption so desired. And this construction has been substantially confirmed by the law of 1890. That law directed the purchase of 4,500,000 ounces of silver a month and the issue of Treasury notes therefor, such Treasury notes to be redeemable in gold or silver coin; and in connection therewith the law declared it to be “the established policy of the United States to