Page:Speeches, correspondence and political papers of Carl Schurz, Volume 6.djvu/230

206 impregnable basis. It was suggested at the time by some of its critics that this law was purposely so manipulated by Republican politicians in the Senate as to leave the possibility of the subversion of the gold standard by Executive action open in order to enable the Republicans in the present Presidential campaign to say that the election of a Republican President was absolutely necessary to save the gold standard and to prevent dreadful economic disaster. Whether any such scheme entered into that legislation, I do not assume to determine. Certain it is, however, that this feature of the law is now so used, and that you, Mr. Secretary, actually do so use it for the evident purpose of alarming the business community and the possessing classes generally.

I hardly need to say to you that the spreading of false alarms of this kind is a very questionable and responsible thing for anybody, and especially for a Secretary of the Treasury. And I call your prediction of the possibilities specified by you and of the disasters sure to follow a false alarm for a very simple reason. Whoever may be elected President on November 6th, there will be another session of Congress before he will take office on March 4, 1901. The Republicans will have strong majorities in both houses of that Congress. The Executive, too, will be in their hands. They will, therefore, be able to make such laws as they please. They will thus have full power and ample opportunity before the inauguration of the next President to pass any legislation required to make it utterly impossible for any President to break down the gold standard in the way you, Mr. Secretary, describe in your interview. A simple enactment in two or three lines substantially providing that it shall be the duty of the Secretary of the Treasury to pay in gold or silver, at the option of the creditor, all kinds of indebtedness of the United States now payable in coin, may be sufficient.