Page:Speeches, correspondence and political papers of Carl Schurz, Volume 5.djvu/339

Rh would do that work so thoroughly that the paralyzing effects would keenly be felt on every farm in the land.

But we are told that the Bryan panic cannot last forever; that finally the business of the country will adjust itself to the silver basis; that then unrest will cease and that confidence and prosperity will return. No, the unrest will not cease. For with the establishment of the silver basis will come the disappointment of those who brought it on.

It will be found that whoever wants silver dollars must either sell something for them or work for them or borrow them, or get them by begging, or steal them; that whoever wants to borrow them must give satisfactory security, just as it was with gold dollars before, and that everybody will want more silver dollars than he wanted gold dollars to do the same business, because they will buy less. It will be found that the silver standard will not lower the rate of interest, but raise it, for the lender will make provisions for a further depreciation of the silver money. It will be found that the West and South, in spite of the bombastic speeches now made, will need Eastern or European capital for the more rapid development of their resources just as much as before; that, while capital is lying idle in heaps, the South and West cannot get it as before, because the free-coinage business will have ruined their credit and frightened capital away by a sense of insecurity. It will be found that if the South and West in their eager desire to get that capital would gladly make gold contracts for it, they will, according to the Chicago platform, be prevented from that, too, by a Bryanese law prohibiting gold contracts, as Mr. Bryan himself expresses it, “in the interest of public policy,” and that thus the South and West will be stripped of the only means to get the capital they so sorely need. It will, in short, be found that the disastrous consequences of the free-coinage policy