Page:The World's Famous Orations Volume 10.djvu/240

 THE WORLD'S FAMOUS ORATIONS

statistics, number nearly 5,000,000 people, and whose deposits amount to more than $1,800,000,- 000. Will you cheat them by reducing the value and purchasing power of the dollar they have deposited ?

Free coinage will also wipe out nearly one-half the value of life insurance, which provident peo- ple of the United States have paid to secure in case of death some support and protection to wife and children. It will affect the multitude of clerks and employees who depend upon monthly pay, and will reduce the purchasing power of all salaries of officers and employees in the United States, and of every State, county, city or township in this broad land. But by far the greatest injury resulting from the free coin- age of silver will fall upon workingmen. Their wages are now based upon money of the highest value, upon gold coin of standard value. Under free coinage of silver the value of the silver dol- lar will fall to fifty-three cents in gold, or, as I have already said, the hundred cents of the gold dollar will be worth 194 cents of the silver dol- lar.

The struggle between workingmen and em- ployer will then commence, and no one knows better than the workingman how difficult it is to get an advance in pay. We have strikes and strife enough now, when the workingman gets his pay in gold coin or its equivalent, but what will be the condition when he is paid in cheaper money of the same nominal amount, but of less 206

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