Uncle Sam: Well, well, you frighten me, for at the rate of four dollars each, the amount necessary for the convenience of the people, I am stacked up ahead for at least fifty years, or until we have about 200,000,000 of people; for you say we have all told $710,000,000 of silver coins in the country now. I want to tell you gentlemen, right now, that I want to get out of this hole, and I want to keep your mind steadily on that point as we go along.
The whole situation is a most embarrassing one. Tell me how much gold coin we have scattered about everywhere over the country?
Mr. Banker: There is about $1,850,000,000 of gold available in the country.
Uncle Sam: Then I am confident there is great plenty for the present, if we can devise some plan, or scheme, to avail ourselves of it.
Mr. Lawyer: I am convinced of that also, but the trouble is going to be to bring it together, centralize it and so mobilize it that we can make the most of it. We have learned one great and most important lesson tonight, and that is that the only money we have is gold, and that we cannot substitute an agreement to pay gold, a debt, a mere demand for gold itself, for it. Such a proposal when you think of it is an absurdity, a contradiction of terms.
To state the result of our conversation, or our conclusion, as I understand it, it is this: Money must be coined out of a commodity that is just as valuable in the form of a commodity as it is in the form of coin. A piece of gold weighing just the same as a $20 gold coin, if as pure, is worth just as much as a $20 gold piece.
Last Wednesday evening we all agreed that, as the result of our conversation, gold was the standard of value of the entire world, and was our standard of value as well.
Tonight, as I understand the result of our talk, we all agree that the only money we have in this country is gold coin; that our money is gold coin, and that our gold coin is our money.
Next Wednesday night let us investigate our currency and ask ourselves "What is currency?"