Page:Speeches, correspondence and political papers of Carl Schurz, Volume 5.djvu/324

300 you remember the crisis of 1893 when the silver basis was in sight?

And now again the mere apprehension of a possibility of Mr. Bryan's election and of the consequent slipping of our country upon the silver basis has already caused untold millions of our securities to be thrown upon the market in Europe as well as here. Scores of business orders are already recalled, a large number of manufacturing establishments have already stopped or restricted their operations, enterprise is already discouraged and nearly paralyzed. Many works of public utility by industrial or railroad companies have already been ordered off, thousands of workingmen are already thrown out of employment, gold is already being hoarded, capital is already being sent out of the country to be invested in Europe for safety. And why, all this? Not, as the silver men foolishly pretend, because the existing gold standard has made money scarce, for capital is lying idle in heaps, scores upon scores of millions, fairly yearning for safe employment. No; ask those concerned why all this happens, and with one voice they will tell you it is because they apprehend serious danger to every dollar ventured out through the change of our standard of value in prospect through the debasement of our currency threatened by the free-silver-coinage movement. And if these are the effects of a mere apprehension of a possibility, what would be the effect of the event itself? There is scarcely an imaginable limit to the destruction certain to be wrought by the business disturbance that Mr. Bryan's mere election would cause, even before his inauguration. After five or six months of such a deadly crisis, Mr. Bryan's extra session of Congress would begin and give us free coinage. Then as Mr. Bryan solemnly promised us in his great New York oration, free coinage will give us bimetallism, bimetallism will give us an abundance of money and all will be right.