What is a dollar? People imagine that a piece of paper with pictures on it, with signatures, is money. The greenback is not money—never was; never will be. It is a promise to pay money; not money. The note of the nation is no nearer money than the note of an individual. A bank note is not money. It is a promise to pay money; that is all.
Well, what is a dollar? In the civilized world it is twenty-three grains and twenty-two one hundredths of pure gold. That is a dollar. Well, cannot we make dollars out of silver? Yes, I admit it, but in order to make a silver dollar you have got to put a dollars worth of silver in the silver dollar, and you have to put as much silver in it as you can buy for twenty-three grains and twenty-two one-hundredths' of a grain of pure gold. It takes a dollar's worth of silver to make a dollar. It takes a dollar's worth of paper to make a paper dollar. It takes a dollar's worth of iron to make an iron dollar; and there is no way of making a dollar without the value.
And let me tell you another thing. You do not add to the value of gold by coining it any more than you add to the value of wheat by measuring it; any more than you add to the value of coal by weighing it. Why do you coin gold? Because every man cannot take a chemist's outfit with him. He cannot carry a crucible and retort, scales and acids, and so the Government coins it, simply to certify how much gold there is in the piece.
Ah, but, says this same gentleman, what gives our money—our silver—its value? It is because it is a legal tender, he says. Nonsense; nonsense. Gold was not given value by being made a legal tender, but being valuable it was made a legal tender. And gold gets no value to-day from being a legal tender. I not only say that, but I will prove it; and I will not only prove it, but I will demonstrate it. Take a twenty dollar gold piece, hammer it out of shape, mar the Goddess of Liberty, pound out the United States of America and batter the eagle, and after you get it pounded how much is it worth?
It is worth exactly twenty dollars. Is it a legal tender? No. Has its value been changed? No. Take a silver dollar. It is a legal tender; now pound it into a cube, and how much is it worth? A little less than fifty cents. What gives it the value of a dollar? The fact that it is a legal tender? No; but the promise of the Government to keep it on an equality with gold. I will not only say this, but I will demonstrate it. I do not ask you to take my word; just use the sense you have.
The Mexican silver dollar has a little more silver in it than one of our dollars, and the Mexican silver dollar is a legal tender in Mexico. If there is any magic about legal tender it ought to work as well in Mexico as in the United States. I take an American silver dollar and I go to Mexico. I buy a dinner for a dollar and I give to the Mexican the American dollar and he gives me a Mexican dollar in change. Yet both of the dollars are legal tender. Why is it that the Mexican dollar is worth only fifty cents? Because the Mexican Government has not agreed to keep it equal with gold; that is all, that is all.
We want the money of the civilized world, and I will tell you now that in the procession of nations every silver nation lags behind—every one. There is not a silver nation on the globe where decent wages are paid for human labor—not one. The American laborer gets ten times as much here in gold as a laborer gets in China in silver, twenty times as much as a laborer does in India, four times as much as a laborer gets in Russia; and yet we are told that the man who will "follow England" with the gold standard lacks patriotism and manhood. What then shall we say of the man that follows China, that follows India in the silver standard?
Does that require patriotism?
It certainly requires self-denial.
And yet these gentlemen say that our money is too good. They might as well say the air is too pure; they might as well say the soil is too rich. How can money be too good? Mr. Bryan says that it is so good, people hoard it; and let me tell him they always will. Mr. Bryan wants money so poor that everybody will be anxious to spend it. He wants money so poor that the rich will not have it. Then he thinks the poor can get it. We are willing to toil for good money. Good money means the comforts and luxuries of life. Real money is always good. Paper promises and silver substitutes may be poor; words and pictures may be cheap and may fade to worthlessness—but gold shines on.