Now, having seen that the coinage of $2,500,000 of silver each month was insufficient to so raise prices in this country as to induce gold to go abroad, but that on the contrary it resulted in an influx and accumulation of a large amount of gold, we may safely assume that only so much of the amount of silver which Congress shall now provide for as exceeds $2,500,000 a month will have any influence in raising prices in this country above international prices, and so providing a stimulus for gold to go abroad in payment for commodities imported into this country.
If the amount of silver which shall be now provided should be, say, $5,000,000 a month, the excess over the present coinage would be $2,500,000 a month. This, then, would be the amount that would drive out gold. As one dollar of silver would drive out no more than one dollar in gold, no more than $2,500,000 could go out monthly. That would leave in circulation the same amount of money that is in circulation now. There would still be no increase in the money volume of the country, and, with no increase in the volume of money, prices here would not rise above international prices. At the rate of $2,500,000 a month, it would take twenty years to drive out $600,000,000 of the $700,000,000 of gold now in this country. It would take even longer than that, because the $600,000,000 driven out would tend to raise international prices abroad, and so check the outflow of gold from here.
Mr. McPHERSON. Will the Senator yield to me for a question, or does he prefer to go on?
Mr. JONES, of Nevada. I am always ready to answer a question.
Mr. McPHERSON. I do not want to interfere with the Senator's line of argument, or with his speech in any form, but it does seem to me that there is something fallacious about the Senator's argument, or else my judgment and the experience of the world is all wrong. I wanted to ask the Senator this question: If it be known that the Government of the United States, if you please, by such an increase of the silver coinage in this country as will be produced by the free coinage of silver, to which theory, as I understand, the Senator is fully committed—if that be the theory of the Government hereafter by the command of Congress, I want to ask the Senator if he broadly and boldly asserts that no gold can be driven out of the country to a greater extent than dollar for dollar for the silver that comes in?
Mr. JONES, of Nevada. Absolutely; I say so.
Mr. McPHERSON. Then I want to ask the Senator another question, which seems to be pertinent. Does the Senator assert that if a 72-cent dollar, the value in bullion of a silver dollar during the year 1889, as has been furnished us by the Director of the Mint and the Secretary of the Treasury, were coined without limit (I say without limit, the limit being, of course, the amount of bullion that is brought to the Treasury to coined), and the people of this country who have been in favor of a safe and honest currency, a currency either gold or as good as gold, which the Treasury has been able to maintain, having forced no silver upon the people if they did not wish it, and in that way the silver dollar having been maintained equal to the gold dollar, I want to know, with the people of this country to-day the holders of $500,000,000 of gold, how it is possible for the Senator to believe that with a 72-cent dollar to take its place the gold coin would circulate for a single week, or a single day, or a single hour? If they have the gold will they not hold it?
Mr. JONES, of Nevada. The Senator has so involved his question with his argument that I can scarcely get at what he wants me to answer.
Mr. McPHERSON. The question I want the Senator to answer is this: Will the people of this country, the financiers of this country, the banks, the moneyed men holding $500,000,000 of gold, with a certainty of the free coinage of silver and going to a silver basis, for that is what it means, put their gold in circulation, or will they hoard it? Will it disappear?
Mr. JONES, of Nevada. I scarcely know what the Senator means by a "silver basis." He talks about a 72-cent dollar. We have never seen a 72-cent dollar. The papers in the East have told us that the silver dollar was worth 72 cents. I recollect talking on that subject once with some Senators in the cloak-room. During the conversation one of the Senate pages brought me a telegram, on which he said the telegraph messenger had told him there were 50 cents due. I give the page a silver dollar and said to him: "I have been informed by some very respectable and intellectual gentlemen in here, some of them now candidates for the Presidency even, that this dollar is worth only 75 cents. I do not want to cheat a little boy. Take this out, and if the boy thinks it worth only 75 cents he can send me back 25 cents, and if he thinks it is worth a dollar he can send me back 50 cents. I will leave it to him." The page brought back 50 cents and said the telegraph boy told him he did not know what those old "duffers" in there might say, but it was as good a dollar as he wanted and was very hard to get. [Laughter.]