Page:Speeches, correspondence and political papers of Carl Schurz, Volume 5.djvu/320

296 as flagrant as the world ever witnessed. Our daily transactions in buying and selling, in paying and receiving wages, will no longer be carried on upon the basis of the gold dollar worth 100 cents, but of the silver dollar worth 50 cents or thereabout—for the Government will no longer hold up the silver dollar to the value of the gold dollar. That is what the silver basis means. You can study in Mexico how it works.

Now, who will get that Treasury gold when, after Bryan's supposed election, the rush for it is made! Not the farmer, not the laboring man, not those whom the Populists usually call the people. They have no greenbacks ready to present for redemption, and if they had they would hardly be quick enough about it. No, that Treasury gold will be promptly gotten hold of by the big bankers, by Wall Street men and by other persons called by the Populists the “money power,” to be by them used as they think most profitable.

The quantity of gold vanishing from circulation will amount to about $600,000,000, the disappearance of which will make a tremendous hole in the volume of our currency. Nearly one-third of it will be gone, and what remains will be reduced nearly one-half in purchasing power. But, says the silver man, there will be free silver coinage to fill the gap promptly with coined silver or silver certificates. Oh, no, my fellow-sufferers. The disappearance of gold will happen promptly after the election of Mr. Bryan, and there will not possibly be any free coinage of silver for at least six months, and it will require a great many more months to fill a gap of $600,000,000.

What will happen meanwhile? The St. Louis Globe-Democrat reports Mr. Bryan to have said some time ago: “I think it [meaning the victory of the free-coinage movement] will cause a panic. But the country is in a deplorable condition, and it will take extreme measures