I AM A BIMETALLIST.
Personally, I am a bimetallist, and confidentially believe the republican party, guided by its wisdom and patriotism, will during the McKinley administration, devise ways and means by international agreement of autimatically adjusting the unsolved problem of true bimetallism, and keep both gold and silver on a parity at some given ratio. Silver will then be lifted from its place as one of the commodities of the earth and dignified as money, side by side with gold. To-day, I am a bimetallist, an ardent and devoted one, in the sense that I desire to see both gold and silver circulating side by side as money, and in the sense that we can have a greater per capita of money in this country by using both gold and silver as currency, than we possibly could by driving gold out of circulation, but fellow citizens, I disbelieve utterly in the possibility of a double standard. The phrase, "double standard" is a contradiction of terms. Standard means "correct measure," and you cannot have two different correct measures of value any more than you can have two different correct yard sticks, or two different correct results from a mathematical problem, or two different correct cyclometers on a bicycle. It one is right the other is wrong, and that is all there is to it. England tried the imaginary double standard for 470 years, and never succeeded in keeping the two metals circulating side by side, and finally gave it up as an utter failure. France with all the ingenuity of her inventive people, changed the ratio of gold and silver 118 times in twelve years in trying to balance on the double standard tight rope. We commenced trying it in 1792, and went on to a silver basis and remained there for 42 years, or until we changed the ratio from 15 to 1, to 16 to 1, in 1834. This change of ratio placed us on a gold basis, where we remained for a number of years. In 1861 we went on a paper basis and remained there for a number of years, and finally went back on to a gold basis in the common accepted understanding of the question, where we have since remained and the progress and prosperity of the United States during the last third of a century has been without a precedent in the history of the civilized world, and yet, I believe with my whole heart, that in the evolution of this financial question, hastened on by agitation, a plain of understanding will be reached higher and beyond that which has ever heretofore obtained in any of the civilized nations of the earth, and it will come through deliberations and councils in the republican party—the party of progress—and when it comes it will lighten the burdens and bless humanity.