Page:Speeches, correspondence and political papers of Carl Schurz, Volume 5.djvu/340

316 will fall upon no part of the country with such crushing weight as upon the South and West.

Well, and the upshot of it all? Those who now cry out that there must be more and cheaper money, because there is not gold enough, will then cry out that there must be more and cheaper money because there is not silver enough. And then it will be argued that, inasmuch as there must be more money, more money, more money, just as well as we can make 50 cents' worth of silver a dollar, we can make a worthless bit of paper a dollar, and, that, after all, the regular unadulterated fiat dollar without redemption is the true money of the people, the only money that costs nothing, the coinage of which will be truly free, independent and unlimited, the only money that can be made in indefinite quantities until everybody has enough. Madness? Yes. But there are logic and method in this madness. The difference between making 50 cents' worth of silver a dollar and making a bit of paper a dollar is not a difference in kind, but only in degree. After Bryan, Tillman.

However, the ultimate result is not at all uncertain. After a period of infinite confusion, disaster, humiliation, suffering and misery the American people will at last regain sanity of mind, and arrive again at some very simple conclusions: That if you call a peck a bushel, you will have more bushels, but not more grain; if you call a foot a yard, you will have more yards, but not more cloth; if you call a square rod an acre, you will have more acres, but not more land; and if you call 50 cents, or 1 cent, or a bit of paper, a dollar, you will have more dollars, but not more wealth—indeed, a great deal less chance for wealth, for you will have far less credit, because far less honesty. We shall then have learned again that the wit of man cannot, although insanity tries very hard, invent an economic system under which everything you have to sell