The Works of Robert G. Ingersoll, Vol. 09 (of 12) / Dresden Edition—Political

by Robert Green Ingersoll

When we were running into debt, thousands of people mistook that for prosperity, and when we began paying they regarded it as adversity. Of course we had plenty when we bought on credit. No man has ever starved when his credit was good, if there were no famine in that country. As long as we buy on credit we shall have enough. The trouble commences when the pay-day arrives. And I do not wonder that after the war thousands of people said, "Let us have another inflation." Which party said, "No, we must pay the promise made in war"? Honor bright! The Democratic party had once been a hard money party, but it drifted from its metallic moorings and floated off in the ocean of inflation, and you know it. They said, "Give us more money;" and every man that had bought on credit and owed a little something on what he had purchased, when the property went down commenced crying, or many of them did, for inflation. I understand it.

A man, say, bought a piece of land for six thousand dollars; paid five thousand dollars on it; gave a mortgage for one thousand dollars, and suddenly, in 1873, found that the land would not pay the other thousand. The land had resumed, and then he said, looking lugubriously at his note and mortgage, "I want another inflation." And I never heard a man call for it that did not also say, "If it ever comes, and I don't unload, you may shoot me."

It was very much as it is sometimes in playing poker, and I make this comparison knowing that hardly a person here will understand it. I have been told that along toward morning the man that is ahead suddenly says, "I have got to go home. The fact is, my wife is not well." And the fellow who is behind says, "Let us have another deal; I have my opinion of the fellow that will jump a game." And so it was in the hard times of 1873. They said: "Give us another deal; let us get our driftwood back into the centre of the stream." And they cried out for more money. But the Republican party said: "We do want more money, but not more promises. We have got to pay this first, and if we start out again upon that wide sea of promise we may never touch the shore." A thousand theories were born of want; a thousand theories were born of the fertile brain of trouble; and these people said, "After all, what is money? Why, it is nothing but a measure of value, just the same as a half bushel or yardstick." True; and consequently it makes no difference whether your half bushel is of wood or gold or silver or paper; and it makes no difference whether your yardstick is gold or paper. But the trouble about that statement is this: A half bushel is not a measure of value; it is a measure of quantity, and it measures rubies, diamonds and pearls precisely the same as corn and wheat. The yardstick is not a measure of value; it is a measure of length, and it measures lace worth one hundred dollars a yard precisely as it does cent tape. And another reason why it makes no difference to the purchaser whether the half bushel is gold or silver, or whether the yardstick is gold or paper, you do not buy the yardstick; you do not get the half bushel in the trade. And if it were so with money—if the people that had the money at the start of the trade, kept it after the consummation of the bargain—then it would not make any difference what you made your money of. But the trouble is the money changes hands. And let me say to-night, money is a thing—it is a product of nature—and you can no more make a "fiat" dollar than you can make a fiat star. I am in favor of honest money. Free speech is the brain of the Republic; an honest ballot is the breath of its life, and honest money is the blood that courses through its veins.

If I am fortunate enough to leave a dollar when I die, I want it to be a good one. I do not wish to have it turn to ashes in the hands of widowhood, or become a Democratic broken promise in the pocket of the orphan; I want it money. I want money that will outlive the Democratic party. They told us—and they were honest about it—they said, "When we have plenty of money, we are prosperous." And I said, "When we are prosperous, we have plenty of money." When we are prosperous, then we have credit, and credit inflates the currency. Whenever a man buys a pound of sugar and says, "Charge it," he inflates the currency; whenever he gives his note, he inflates the currency; whenever his word takes the place of money, he inflates the currency. The consequence is that when we are prosperous, credit takes the place of money, and we have what we call "plenty."

But you cannot increase prosperity simply by using promises to pay. Suppose you should come to a river that was about dry, so dry that the turtle had to help the catfish over the shoals, and there you would see the ferryboat, and the gentleman who kept the ferry, up on the sand, high and dry, and the cracks all opening in the sun, filled with loose oakum, looking like an average Democratic mouth listening to a constitutional argument, and you should say to him, "How is business?" And he would say, "Dull." And then you would say to him, "Now, what you want is more boat." He would probably answer, "If I had a little more water I could get along with this one."

Suppose I next came to a man running a railroad, complaining of hard times. "Why," said he, "I did a million dollars' worth of business the first year and used five hundred thousand dollars' worth of grease. The second year I did five hundred thousand dollars' worth of business and used four hundred thousand dollars' worth of grease." "Well," said I, "the reason your road fell off was because you did not use enough grease."

But I want to be fair, and I wish to-night to return my thanks to the Democratic party. You did a great and splendid work. You went all over the United States and you said upon every stump that a greenback was better than gold. You said, "We have at last found the money of the poor man. Gold loves the rich; gold haunts banks and safes and vaults; but we have money that will go around inquiring for a man that is dead broke. We have finally found money that will stay in a pocket with holes in it." But, after all, do you know that money is the most social thing in this world? If a fellow has one dollar in his pocket, and he meets another with two, do you know that dollar is absolutely homesick until it gets where the other two are? And yet the Greenbackers told us that they had finally invented money that would be the poor mans friend. They said, "It is better than gold, better than silver," and they got so many men to believe it that when we resumed and said, "Here is your gold for your greenback," the fellows who had the greenback said, "We don't want it. The greenbacks are good enough for us." Do you know, if they had wanted it we could not have given it to them? And so I return my thanks to the Greenback party. But allow me to say in this connection, the days of their usefulness have passed forever.

Now, I am not foolish enough to claim that the Republican party resumed. I am not silly enough to say that John Sherman resumed. But I will tell you what I do say. I say that every man who raised a bushel of corn or a bushel of wheat or a pound of beef or pork for sale helped to resume. I say that the gentle rain and the loving dew helped to resume. The soil of the United States impregnated by the loving sun helped to resume. The men that dug the coal and the iron and the silver and the copper and the gold helped to resume. And the men upon whose foreheads fell the light of furnaces helped to resume. And the sailors who fought with the waves of the seas helped to resume.

I admit to-night that the Democrats earned their share of the money to resume with. All I claim is that the Republican party furnished the honesty to pay it over. That is what I claim; and the Republican party set the day, and the Republican party worked to the promise. That is what I say. And had it not been for the Republican party this Nation would have been financially dishonored. I am for honest money, and I am for the payment of every dollar of our debt, and so is every Democrat now, I take it. But what did you say a little while ago? Did you say we could resume? No; you swore we could not, and you swore our bonds would be worthless as the withered leaves of winter. And now when a Democrat goes to England and sees an American four per cent, quoted at one hundred and ten he kind of swells up, and says: "That's the kind of man I am." In that country he pretends he was a Republican in this. And I do not blame him. I do not begrudge him enjoying respectability when away from home. The Republican party is entitled to the credit for keeping this Nation grandly and splendidly honest. I say, the Republican party is entitled to the credit of preserving the honor of this Nation.

In 1873 came the crash, and all the languages of the world cannot describe the agonies suffered by the American people from 1873 to 1879. A man who thought he was a millionaire came to poverty; he found his stocks and bonds ashes in the paralytic hand of old age. Men who expected to live all their lives in the sunshine of joy found themselves beggars and paupers. The great factories were closed, the workmen were demoralized, and the roads of the United States were filled with tramps. In the hovel of the poor and the palace of the rich came the serpent of temptation and whispered in the American ear the terrible word "Repudiation." But the Republican party said, "No; we will pay every dollar. No; we have started toward the shining goal of resumption and we never will turn back." And the Republican party struggled until it had the happiness of seeing upon the broad shining forehead of American labor the words "Financial Honor."