Page:Speeches, correspondence and political papers of Carl Schurz, Volume 6.djvu/233

Rh elected and free to act and a President elected after a campaign run on other issues, with adverse majorities in Congress, and bound hand and foot by a law such as now exists, or as you and your friends in power may still make it. Is it quite ingenuous, is it not doing violence to truth, to quote words uttered under one set of circumstances as applicable to a set of circumstances so essentially different?

To my suggestion that, if the present law is defective, the Republican Congress and Administration would before the inauguration of the next President have ample power and opportunity to prevent the Executive action, with its disastrous consequences, which you so luridly depict, you object that Congress would “probably” find it difficult to use that power owing to possible obstructive tactics of the minority. Whatever those who insist upon the necessity of Mr. McKinley's reëlection for the preservation of the gold standard may say, my parliamentary experience teaches me that if you, as Secretary of the Treasury, prepare a simple measure of remedial legislation and have it introduced in Congress on the first day of the session, and the majority presses it with a sincere determination to use all legitimate means to overcome obstructive tactics, the three months of the session will be more than sufficient to put through such a bill.

There will be no trouble about this if the Republican majority is willing to do it. Or do you suspect that it might not be willing, even if such action appeared necessary to save the gold standard? If not willing then the Republicans would be saying to the American people substantially this:

We are the men to maintain the gold standard. Therefore, you must keep us in office and permit us to do whatever else we please, however obnoxious it may be to you. For, if you vote us out, we shall let the gold standard go to perdition even