Page:The World's Famous Orations Volume 10.djvu/239

 SHERMAN

��is certain that before a free coinage bill can become a law the wide distrust caused by the pending of such a measure will lead to the rapid collection of debts, the sacrifice of property and deepen existing financial difficulties growing out of insufficient revenues for the nation as well as for any state government.

It is sometimes said of creditors that they are bloodthirsty Shylocks, aristocrats, blood-suckers, extortioners. It may be that there are among money-lenders some men who merit these epi- thets, but the great body of creditors of our country are among the thrifty, industrious and intelligent men and women of every community. One great body of creditors here is the 970,000 Union soldiers, their widows and orphans, who are creditors of the United States to the amount of over $140,000,000 a year for services and sac- rifices in the Union army. It would be an act of perfidy and meanness beyond expression for this great country to pay them with the money of less purchasing power than gold coin, merely because the overproduction of silver in the United States has reduced the market value of silver bullion contained in a silver dollar. To take advantage of this decline in order to reduce the value of the pittance to these pensioners is worse than to rob the graves of the dead.

There is another class of creditors that the free coinage of silver will greatly injure. It is the depositors in savings institutions and kin- dred organizations, who, according to officio} 205

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