'Gentlemen:—It gives me pleasure to meet so many of the active business men of Cincinnati, even for a brief period. In the office which I hold I have a great deal to do with merchants, like these engaged in the exchange of the products of our industries, and I congratulate you, first of all, that this fall, by the bounty of Divine Providence, you will have to market the largest crop we have ever gathered in this country since the world was born.
'In every part of our country, with but few exceptions, and only as to certain crops, are crops greater than ever before, and you will have to buy and sell them.
'The only point of an unpleasant nature, that occurs to me, affecting the industrial interests which you so largely represent, is the misfortune which has befallen large portions of the south, where yellow fever, one of the worst enemies of human life, now has spread a pall of distress among our southern brethren. I am glad, fellow- citizens, that you are doing something to contribute to the relief of their sufferings, because business men, above all others, are to be humane and generous to those who are in distress.
'That this will, to some extent, affect the business of gathering cotton, I have no doubt will occur to you all, but you can only hope that it will be but a brief season until the frost will dissipate the distress of the south and the cotton crop may be safely gathered.
'There is another thing I can congratulate you upon as business men, that is—our currency is soon to be based upon the solid money of the world. I do not want to talk politics to you, and I do not intend to do so, but I suppose it is the common desire of all men engaged in business to have a stable, certain standard of value, and although you and I may differ as to the best means of obtaining it, and as to whether the means that have been adopted have been the proper means, yet I believe the merchants of Cincinnati desire that their money shall be as good as the money of any country with which we trade. And that, I think, will soon be accomplished.
'Now, gentlemen, I do not know that there is any other topic on which you desire to hear from me. I take a hopeful view of our business affairs. I think all the signs of the times are hopeful. I think it a hopeful fact that, after this week, there will be an end of bankruptcies, that all men who believe that they are not in a condition to pay their debts will have taken the benefit of the law provided for their relief, and, after Saturday next, we will all stand upon a better basis—on the basis of our property and our deserved credit.
'It has been the habit, you know, of one of your able and influential journals to charge me with all the bankruptcies of the country. If a grocer could not sell goods enough to pay expenses, and a saloon keeper could not sell beer enough to get rich, and took the short way of paying his debts, this paper would announce the fact that he had "Shermanized." [Laughter.] And if a bank was robbed, or the cashier gobbled the money in the safe and left for parts unknown, this able editor announced that the bank had "Shermanized." And thus this paper contributed largely to the very result it denounced. You understand how this thing works.
'But we have passed through this severe crisis. It has been common in all countries and all states that carry on extensive commercial transactions with each other. I believe that we are through with this one; a ray of hope has dawned on us, and we are certainly entering upon a career of prosperity. Every sign of business is hopeful. We have paid off immense amount of our debts. We do not owe Europe anything of consequence. We have gone through the debt paying process. A few years ago we were running in debt at the rate of $100,000,000 a year, but lately we have been paying off our debt at the rate of $100,000,000 a year. From this time on we will be more prosperous. Take heart, you men of Cincinnati; you men who represent the great interests in this great city; you who live in the heart of the great west, take heart in the transaction of your business, because I believe you have reached a solid basis upon which to conduct your business profitably, the basis of solid coin.'"
From Cincinnati I went to Lancaster, the place of my birth, and where my eldest sister, Mrs. Reese, resides. I need not say that the visit was a pleasant one, for it was necessarily so. A great many among those whom I saw had been my associates in boyhood, and, as a matter of course, the topics of conversation were mainly of the past. A dispatch to the Cincinnati "Gazette" of the date of August 30, briefly describes my visit and gives the substance of a few remarks I was called upon to make by an impromptu gathering in the evening at the residence of my sister:
"The Lancaster band serenaded Secretary John Sherman this evening, at the residence of his sister, Mrs. General Reese. A very large crowd assembled on the occasion, and, in response, Senator Sherman made one of the neatest, pleasantest, and most satisfactory little talks heard here for many a day. Of course he began by touching upon his early boyhood, and some of the incidents of the same spent here in old Lancaster, the place of his nativity; told of his incipient struggles in life with the rod and chain on an engineer corps in the Muskingum valley; how he was ushered into the sterner vicissitudes of life, and how he drifted into politics; and then, without using the occasion for party purposes, without making a political speech, he explained in well selected language his position as an officer of the government; what was the course prescribed for him to do, how he was doing it, and concluding with a most clear and intelligible exegesis of the resumption act; what it was, its intent, purpose and meaning; and with convincing nicety and clearness, and evident satisfactoriness, was his explanation given, that he was frequently interrupted by spontaneous applause from the crowd. He told how the credit of the country was advancing as we near the solid foundation of hard money; how the American people were the most favored, the greatest blest, the freest and most prosperous people on the earth; how the signs of the times in busy shops and abounding field told of the disappearing hard times, and the dawning of an era of greater peace and prosperity."