Autobiography of Seventy Years, Vol. 1-2

by George Frisbie Hoar

Yours sincerely,
ARTHUR JAMES BALFOUR.

I never blamed him. He was in the midst of a good deal of difficulty with his Education Bill. Certainly there can be no obligation on the Leader of the English House of Commons to do anything that he is not sure is for the interests of his own country, or his own party, for the sake of benefitting a foreign country, still less for the sake of affecting its politics. Indeed, I suppose Mr. Balfour would have utterly and very rightfully disclaimed any idea of writing such a letter, unless he thought what was proposed would benefit England. When I went back to London, an offer was made me later to arrange another interview with Mr. Balfour, and see if something else could not be devised. This I declined. I thought I had gone as far as I properly could, with a due sense of my own dignity. The exigency at home had pretty much passed by.

A day or two after I got to Paris, after I had seen M. Fougirot, I cabled my colleague, Mr. Lodge, at St. Louis, where the delegates to the convention to nominate a President were then gathering, stating my hope that our convention would insert in its platform a declaration of the purpose of the Republican Party to obtain, in concert with other nations, the restoration of silver as a legal tender in company with gold, and that I had reason to feel sure that such a plan could be accomplished. This cable reached St. Louis on the morning the convention assembled. I do not know how much influence it had, or whether it had any, in causing the insertion of that plank in the platform. Such a plank was inserted. In my opinion it saved the Presidential election, and, in my opinion, in saving the Presidential election, it saved the country from the incalculable evil of the free coinage of silver.

After I came home, at the next winter's session, I told the story of what I had done, to a caucus of the Republican Senators. A Committee was thereupon appointed by John Sherman, President of the Caucus, to devise proper means for keeping the pledge of the National platform and establishing international bimetallism in concurrence with other nations. The Committee consisted of Messrs. Wolcott, Hoar, Chandler, Carter and Gear. They reported the Act of March 3, 1897, authorizing a commission to visit Europe for that purpose, of which Senator Wolcott was chairman.

A Commission was sent abroad by President McKinley, in pursuance of the pledge of the Republican National platform, to endeavor to effect an arrangement with the leading European nations for an international bimetallic standard. Senator Wolcott of Colorado, who was the head of this Commission, told me he was emboldened to undertake it by the account I had given. The Commission met with little success. I conjecture that the English Administration, although a majority of the Government, and probably a majority of the Conservative Party, were Bimetallists and favored an international arrangement on principle, did not like to disturb existing conditions at the risk of offending the banking interests at London, especially those which had charge of the enormous foreign investments, the value of which would be constantly increasing so long as their debts were payable, principal and interest, in gold, the value of which, also, was steadily appreciating.

It has been the fashion of some quite zealous—I will not say presumptuous, still less ignorant or shallow writers on this subject—to charge bimetallists with catering to a mischievous, popular delusion, for political purposes, or with shallowness in thinking or investigating. I have had my share of such criticism. All I have to say in reply to it is that I have done my best to get at the truth, without, so far as I am concerned, any desire except to get at and utter the truth. In addition to the authority of our own early statesmen, and to that of the eminent Englishmen to whom I have referred, I wish to cite that of my pupil and dear friend, General Francis A. Walker, who is declared by abundant European, as well as American authority, to be the foremost writer on money of modern times. He was a thorough believer in the doctrine I have stated.

He pointed out the danger, indeed the ruin, of undertaking to reestablish silver without the consent of foreign nations. But he declared that the happiness and, perhaps, the safety of the country rested on Bimetallism. He said:

"Indeed, every monometallist ought also to be a monoculist. Polyphemus, the old Cyclops, would be his ideal. Unfortunately our philosophers were not in the Garden of Eden at the time when the Creator made the mistake of endowing men with eyes in pairs. Perhaps it would not be too much to say that there are probably few men whose eyes do not differ from each other as to every element affecting vision by more than the degree from which gold and silver varied from the French standard of fifteen and a half to one for whole decades."

The German Imperial Parliament passed a resolution, in June, 1895, in favor of Bimetallism, and the Prussian Parliament passed a resolution favoring an international bimetallic convention, provided England joined it, May 22, 1895.

The great increase in the gold product of the world, and the constant diminution in the value of silver, have put an end to the danger of the movement for the free coinage of silver, and made the question purely academic or theoretic, at any rate for a good while to come. The same causes have diminished the desire for a bimetallic standard, and make the difficulty of establishing a parity between silver and gold, for the present, almost insuperable. So the question which excited so much public feeling throughout the world for nearly a quarter of a century, and endangered not only the ascendancy of the Republican Party, but the financial strength of the United States, has become almost wholly one of theory and ancient history.