One thousand secrets of wise and rich men revealed

by C. A. Bogardus

In the blackest of the dark days of the late rebellion when the possible, and to a certain extent the seeming probable success of the confederacy was spreading like an appalling cloud over our country, we find it on record that the English were preparing their man-of-war and navy to assist the South when the illustrious Lincoln said, "Hands off," and it was so; suppose Mr. Lincoln had said to England, "Let us have an international agreement that you are not to interfere." Why, my friends, I believe England would have signed such an agreement the day after Mr. Lincoln had acknowledged the independence of the Southern States, and not before. We may as well know that the success of a Republican or Democratic form of government is envied by all the monarchies or empires where the people have less self-government. The gold standard monarchies or empires will never, knowingly, do anything to improve times in a republic and thus create among their subjects a desire to throw off the monarchial yoke of oppression.

I know that much has been said against the American republic becoming entangled with the European powers, but I fear that many in treating on this line do not show the real menace of such an entanglement. We all know that the laws of the empires and monarchies are in the interest of the moneyed classes, and we are proud to say that in America our laws are for the masses.

Let me tell you by way of comparison why we should keep out of an international agreement entanglement on the money question. I will use the tariff as an illustration. I care not what your politics may be, you will all agree with me that there was one redeeming feature in the McKinley bill. That some good feature was in the Wilson-Gormon act, and the same quality of goodness today shines forth in the present Dingley tariff law. Do you ask what that feature is? I answer it is this: That law was passed by the independent action of the American Congress. If we do not like it we can repeal it, without waiting for the aid or consent of any other nation on earth.

Our Government bonds are all payable in coins of the United States of the standard weight and value of July 14, 1870; that weight was 23.22 grains of gold or 371.25 grains of silver to the dollar. The value of those coins was that they were a legal tender in the payment of debts.

If we have an international agreement for bimetallism we can not have it all our own way—the foreigner would be entitled to a voice. Suppose we would fix the ratio at any other than the ratio of July 14th, 1870. Then our dollars would no longer be of the weight that the bonds call for and the foreigner would have the best of us, for our own coins would not be a legal tender in payment of our bonds. Now suppose we wanted to repeal that law, could we repeal it by international agreement? Well, I guess not. The foreigners would never consent to the repeal of a law that was to their advantage. Therein lies the real menace of an international agreement even if we could get it. The only way we could ever get rid of that agreement would be just to back squarely out, then we might properly be called repudiators.

We often hear it said that the congress of 1792 used great care to put just a dollar's worth of silver in a silver dollar and dollar's worth of gold in the gold dollar. Now while it is true that according to the law of April 12, 1792, a dollar's worth of silver was put in the silver dollar, the amount of silver became worth a dollar as a creature of law, and it is not true that the silver dollar became worth a dollar because of the value of the silver contained in it. That congress made the dollar just as God made man. God said, "Let us make man," and the Lord God formed man of the dust of the ground and breathed into his nostrils the breath of life, and man became a living soul. God did not study and bother his mind about taking a man's worth of dust to make a man. No, he took some dust of the ground and formed therefrom a man and by his own authority breathed the breath of life in man's nostrils and man thus became a living soul. God then gave man legal authority over the living creatures of the earth and also gave him authority to replenish the earth. Man's rights came from the power of God.

The constitution says congress shall have power to coin money and regulate the value thereof. So congress made the dollar as God made man, and the American congress formed the dollar of the silver and gold of the earth, put the eagle on one side of the coin and breathed into that coin the legal tender law, and the bimetallic dollar became a living soul of prosperity for eighty-one years as long as the silver and gold were allowed to fly side by side; but when in 1873 the wings were clipped from the silver and the legal tender breath shut off, then the gold had to do all the work; it being too weak to do so, adversity came.

They tell us that law cannot regulate value and that gold never changes in value. Let us for a moment form ourselves into a party of truthseekers and look up the record as to that proposition. The law of April 2nd, 1792, said 371.75 grains of silver could be freely coined into one dollar, or two halves, or four quarters, or ten dimes, each to be a legal tender at its face value, if not worn, for any amount; that law also said 24.75 grains of gold could be coined into coins of the value of the dollar; of course you understand the gold was in higher denominations than the dollar. Now let us watch carefully as to whether or not the law cannot regulate value and that gold never changes. In 1834 the law said 23.20 grains of gold when coined in American money constituted a dollar. Let me see, the gold has changed all at once and the law regulates the amount of gold that goes in a dollar. In 1837, the law requires 23.22 grains of gold to the dollar, another change. In 1853 the law says that no longer shall it require 371.75 grains of silver to make a dollar's worth of fractional coins, but that 342.22 grains of silver would make two halves, four quarters or ten dimes, and they should be a legal tender in the payment of debts for $5. In '73 the coinage of the standard silver dollar was stopped by law, and silver fell in price. In 1878 the Bland-Allison act allowed the coinage of the standard silver dollar. In 1890 the Sherman act called for more silver coinage and the price of silver immediately advanced. In 1893 the coinage of silver was again stopped and the price of silver dropped, hence we see that the law does regulate values, and that gold does change in value so far even as the dollar is concerned. A teacher once told Benjamin Franklin that a boy told him, if he would take a tub weighing 100 pounds and put 500 pounds of water in it, which only about half filled the tub, the tub and water would weigh 600 pounds, but if he would put a live fish weighing 100 pounds in the tub, the tub, water and fish would not weigh more than 600 pounds. Can you explain that curious contradiction of the law of gravity, asked the teacher of Franklin. Whereupon Mr. Franklin requested his interrogator to call at his office next day. Franklin procured a tub weighing 100 pounds, put in it 500 pounds of water, and the weight was 600 pounds, just as the boy had told the teacher; then Mr. Franklin added a 100-pound live fish and the total weight was 700 pounds. The next day the teacher called on Franklin for his solution of the great problem, whereupon Franklin replied, there was but one solution to the question. "What is that?" anxiously inquired the visitor. "Why," replied Franklin, "the boy lied."

My friends, when they tell us the law cannot regulate value and that gold never changes, and when we examine the records and see that gold does change and that law does regulate value, we say there is but one answer to them, and that is just as Franklin answered the teacher about the boy.

We hear it said by the Republicans that free silver would drive gold out of the country; our Democratic friends tell us that free silver will not drive gold out of the country. So we see on that point people seem to differ in opinion. For my part I believe that free silver either will drive the gold out or else it will not. I want to ask the Republicans to acknowledge for the sake of argument that silver would not drive the gold out. Now, let us examine the question if silver don't drive the gold out, and we have a block of gold large enough to make into $100, and a block of silver sufficiently large to make into a like amount, if the gold-standard Democratic idea prevails, all the money we could coin would be the $100 from the gold, for silver could not be coined, but if bimetallism prevailed we could coin $100 from the gold and $100 from the silver, making $200, that is, if the silver does not drive out the gold. But the Republicans may urge that free silver would drive out the gold by the gold going at a premium over silver, then we would coin the block of silver into 100 legal tender dollars and the gold would be exchanged for a block of silver say 25 per cent larger than the block that drove it out, and we would coin that block into 125 legal tender dollars, adding it to the silver that stayed at home, making 225 dollars, just $25 more than we would have if the gold did not advance to a premium. But they tell us that would be coining the cheapest metal. Now, honor bright, you Republicans cannot complain of that for the reason I will presently explain. We often hear it urged that during the eighty-one years of bimetallism in the United States only about 8,000,000 silver dollars were coined, and that subsequently to 1873 more than 400,000,000 have been coined. True, there were only about 8,000,000 dollar pieces made of the silver metal, but there were more than $8,000,000 made because of the silver, for as France had a ratio of 15½ to 1 against our ratio of 16 to 1 our gold stayed at home and the silver was at a 3 per cent premium over the gold according to the French ratio, then a $100 block of gold drove a $100 block of silver to France, and drove from France to America a block of gold large enough to make $103. So we had our gold made into $100, and the gold that came from France in exchange for silver made into $103, making a total of $203, whereas we could only have had $200 if one metal had not gone at a premium. History, arithmetic and common sense prove the correctness of this proposition.