The New York Times/1900/9/13/Carl Schurz Replies to Secretary Gage's Letter of Sept. 4

To the Hon. Lyman J. Gage, Secretary of the Treasury:

Sir: The object of my open letter of Sept. 1 was, by offering a means of escape from the dangers pointed out by you, to call public attention to the fact that the present campaign is by no means a repetition of that of 1896, and that the money question now has no right to stand in the way of a fair consideration of other important questions on their own merits. I thank you for the courtesy of your answer, but I must regret that, instead of favorably receiving my well-meant suggestion, it only shows to what lengths partisan zeal will go in the attempt to frighten the people into the belief that only Mr. McKinley s re-election can save them from general ruin, and that no objection to him in any other respect must have any weight with them.

To help on the alarm, you quote from a speech made by me in 1896, showing what disastrous consequences I predicted would be brought on by the election of Mr. Bryan. I believed at the time, and I believe now, that those consequences would have followed had Mr. Bryan been elected then, after a campaign turning wholly upon the financial issue, with no existing law seriously to hamper him, and with majorities in both houses of Congress prospectively at his back. But you know as well as I do that circumstances have essentially changed, and that there is an immense difference between a President so

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 re-election 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

while able to save it. We have you by the throat and mean to hold you so.” If this be really the spirit of the Republicans in power the people will soon conclude that they are a public danger and a nuisance and ought to be got rid of at any cost. You certainly cannot wish your party to stand in such a light.

I repeat, therefore, that the Republican majority in Congress not only can, but, if only for its own moral salvation, will do this thing in case of necessity, and you, Mr. Secretary, then relieved of your partisan campaign service, will, as a good citizen, be one of the first to urge it to be done, if you sincerely think the currency law to be as defective as in your recent threat of disaster you represent it to be.

But do you really think that it is so defective and that the dangers you predicted owing to that defectiveness really threaten? In your letter you say that, since I had accepted “for argument's sake” your statements on these points, “there is no particular difference between us as to what Mr. Bryan, as President, could do under the law or in spite of the law as it now is.” You must pardon me for observing, Mr. Secretary, that when you tell the public that I agree with you on those points, you strain the truth rather violently. Accepting a statement “for argument's sake” means that we admit it only as a basis for reasoning, while we may really hold an entirely opposite opinion. And in this case I have, indeed, strong authorities for differing from you, and, curiously enough, among these authorities you, Mr. Secretary, occupy a very prominent place. About July 15th you gave out an interview on the identical points here in question, which has recently been republished, and which stands in strange contrast to the alarm blast sounded a month later. It is worth while to place the two utterances side by side:

You concluded the interview of July 15 by saying that the law might indeed be subjected “to a severe strain from the November day that Mr. Bryan's election were made known until the Treasury was turned over to him on March 4,” and that the present Administration would probably have to “use to the uttermost the powers conferred by the new law to maintain the gold standard,” owing to possible apprehensions that might be created among the business community, which, however, does not impugn your previous statements as to the safety of the gold standard under the law as it stands.

Thus it is Mr. Gage who brings against himself the charge of spreading “false alarms.” In the one column we hear you as the financier and the conscientious public officer who feels it to be his duty not to excite but to allay unnecessary disquietude. If it be suggested that Mr. Bryan, if elected, might announce his purpose to pay interest on bonds and the current expenses of the Government in silver, and thereby gradually bring us on the silver basis, the conscientious public officer answers: “Do not excite yourself about this. Even if Mr. Bryan were ever so much as inclined, he would under the law not be able to accomplish this mischief. And if there be a flurry of apprehension in the case of Mr. Bryan s election, always remember that the gold standard will find protection under the law anyhow. Be not unnecessarily frightened, but go quietly about your business.” In the other column we hear the partisan, who, in order to terrify the public for the benefit of his candidate, decries all manner of deviltry and trouble that may happen under the law; who, when a way to strengthen the law is pointed out to him, as I did point it out, lightly puts that aside as impracticable, and who &mdash; an almost unheard-of thing even in our political warfare &mdash; suggests that the possible successors of the present President and the present Secretary of the Treasury may intend deliberately to violate the law by the exercise of “perverse ingenuity” &mdash; all this to put the people into a panicky mood, and thus to drive them to Mr. McKinley as their only savior from a vague sort of disaster.

Of the same color is the prediction that the sound-money majority in Congress may be wiped out, and that then the gold-standard law will be repealed. You know, Mr. Secretary, that this is no more likely to happen than a heavy snowstorm in July in the latitude of Washington. It is admitted that there will be a sound-money majority in the Senate for at least two years longer. And if in two years the gold standard should appear to be in the slightest danger, is it not absolutely certain that then the same forces that carried the election of 1896 would be on hand to elect a sound-money House of Representatives? There can be no doubt of this.

No candid person can have watched recent political developments without concluding that even a Democratic House of Representatives, elected under the influence of the present public sentiment, would always have sound money Democrats enough in it to prevent a subversion of the gold standard. You need only observe the present condition of the Democratic party to become convinced that the silver movement has lost its vitality, and that the talk about silver now is a mere rattling with dry bones, kept up on one side to have an appearance of consistency, and on the other to frighten people into forgetting all other questions and voting for Mr. McKinley.

And this, Mr. Secretary, is the task you are now performing. It is an attempt so to terrorize the American people with a threat of business disaster that they may be deterred from considering any other question, and from casting a vote which would amount to a condemnation of Mr. McKinley's imperialistic policy. I, for one, refuse to be so terrorized. I am certainly as anxious to maintain the gold standard as you are. I say this as one who, during more than a quarter of a century, has made the advocacy of a sound monetary system one of the principal parts of his public activity, who looks back upon that feature of his work with especial satisfaction, and who, if he has somewhat, however little, contributed to the accomplishment of good results, would not lightly expose those results to jeopardy. But I am convinced that the battle for sound money is substantially won, and that whatever apparent danger to the gold standard may still arise, it must and can be overcome without the people subjecting themselves to a moral thralldom keeping them from independent and conscientious action upon other public questions of equal, and even superior, importance. And I may assure you, Mr. Secretary, that there are such questions with regard to which many American citizens have very strong convictions of duty. Very respectfully yours,

CARL SCHURZ.

Bolton Landing, Lake George, N. Y., Sept. 10, 1900.


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