Page:Speeches, correspondence and political papers of Carl Schurz, Volume 5.djvu/343

Rh when I see the unscrupulous efforts made to goad them on to their destruction. I have witnessed in my long life ten Presidential campaigns, but never one in which the appeals to prejudice, passion and cupidity were so reckless and the speculation upon assumed popular ignorance or rascality so audacious and wicked. Some of the silver orators actually speak as if they believed the American people to be born fools or knaves, or both.

Look at this. To frighten the innocent with the terror of the unknown, a dreadful picture is painted of the “money power” of Wall Street, and worse still, the money power of England, as able, ready and eager to “corner” the gold of the world, and thus to impoverish and enslave the people. Well, if the money power were able and eager to corner the gold of the world, would free silver coinage in the United States prevent it? I have shown that by driving our gold straight into the jaws of the money power, free silver coinage would help that money power in cornering gold. According to the silver authorities there are in the world about $4,000,000,000 of silver and about $4,000,000,000 of gold in circulation. But the silver dollars are the only 50-cent dollars. Now if the money power, with the help of free silver coinage, corners all the gold, it will be able to buy up all the silver and have nearly $2,000,000,000 in gold over. Will it not?

You may say that the money power cannot get hold of the silver, because the silver, in the shape of coin or of paper based upon it, will be in general use as money. But is not, under the gold standard, the gold, in the shape of coin or paper based upon it, in the same general use as money? And if for this reason silver cannot be cornered, will it not for the same reason be impossible to corner gold? This may sound like a huge joke, and so it is. But does it not show that if those terrible things could be done at all, they could be done with silver just as well as