Page:Speeches, correspondence and political papers of Carl Schurz, Volume 6.djvu/229

Rh You went on to say that although Mr. Bryan “would have great difficulty in doing that at once,” owing to the small silver resources of the Government, yet he might accomplish it in time, as the mere announcement of such a purpose “would stop the inflow of gold or at least very largely diminish payments in gold and correspondingly increase payments into the Treasury of silver and silver certificates”; that this would practically put the Government on a silver basis, ruin its credit and bring incalculable disaster upon the business interests of the country.

Having for a great many years taken a deep and some what active interest in the establishment of a sound monetary system in the United States, I may without impropriety publicly address to you a few remarks in reply to your public statement. I emphatically deny, Mr. Secretary, that the danger set forth by you in your interviews really exists, and that any President will be able to do what you say might be done, unless the Republican party in control of the Government in both its Legislative and Executive branches prove itself utterly dishonest in its professed purpose to maintain the gold standard.

This denial is not based upon the reasoning of those of your critics who seek to show by figures that a President, desiring ever so much to put the country upon a silver basis, would lack the means for doing so. On the contrary, for argument's sake, I will accept all you say on that point. But you omit to mention a fact of decisive importance.

If the Executive, as you say, possesses the discretion of “paying silver in settlement of all interest on the public debt not specifically payable in gold, and of making its daily disbursements to its creditors in silver,” it is owing to a flaw in the currency law passed at the last session of Congress—a law which, as the spokesman of the Republican party promised, was to put the gold standard upon an