Page:Speeches, correspondence and political papers of Carl Schurz, Volume 5.djvu/349

Rh single word in the Constitution which, honestly interpreted, could justify such a claim.

They invoke for their cause the names of Jefferson and Jackson, while every reader of history knows that Jefferson and Jackson would have stood aghast at their wild scheme of creating by law a false value, and would have kicked out of their presence as a public nuisance any one seriously advocating it.

Such things the free coinage agitators tell the American people, assuming them to be without intelligence. Far worse are the appeals they address to them, assuming them to be without moral sense.

They have been teaching the people that because the prices of wheat and other things have fallen about one-half since the so-called demonetization year, 1873,—I have shown why those prices have fallen,—it is not equitable that debtors should be held to pay more than half the amount of their debts in gold, that they should be released in correspondence with the decline of prices, and that it would therefore be right to reduce by free silver coinage the value of the debt-paying money by one-half.

If this were right as a general principle, how would it apply to our debts? Of our Government bonds, there are very few that do not bear date long after 1873. Many of them were sold for the express purpose of bringing gold into the Treasury. Our corporation bonds, are, as a rule, also quite young. But all these obligations are a mere trifle compared with the immense sums of debt contracted in the daily transactions of business. The average life of a real estate mortgage is only five years. But probably nine-tenths of all our debts are those between firm and firm or between man and man in the form of notes, bills of exchange, wage bills and open accounts, the amount of which is incalculable. How old are these? From one hour to six months. How would the principle apply to