our National debt more than $262,000,000, a sum nearly as great as the debt of the Government from Washington to Lincoln, including all our foreign wars from the Revolution to the Rebellion. Since its passage, work at home has been diminished; prices of agricultural products have fallen; confidence has been arrested, and general business demoralization is seen on every hand. THE TARIFFS OF 1890 AND 1894 CONTRASTED. The total receipts under the Tariff Act of 1894 for the first twenty- two months of its enforcement, from September, 1894, to June, 1896, were $557,615,328, and the expenditures $640,418,363, or a deficiency of $82,803,035. The decrease in our exports of American products and manufactures during the first fifteen months of 'the present tariff, as contrasted with the exports of the first fifteen months of the tariff of 1890, was $220,353,320. The excess of exports over imports during the first fifteen months of the tariff of 1890 was $213,972,968, but only $56,- 758,623 under the first fifteen months of thetariff of 1894, a loss under the latter of $157,214,345. The net loss in the trade balance of the United States has been $196,983,607 during the first fifteen months’ operation of the tariff of 1894, as compared with the first fifteen months of the tariff of 189Q. The loss has been large, constant and steady, at the rate of $13,130,000 per month, or $500,000 for every business day of the year. LOSING IN BOTH DIRECTIONS. We have either been sending too much money out of the country, or getting too little in, or both. We have lost steadily in both directions. Our foreign trade has been diminished and our domestic trade has suffered incalculable loss. Does not this suggest the cause of our present depression, and indicate its remedy? Confidence in home enterprises has almost wholly disappeared. Our shops are closed, or running on half time at reduced wages and small profit, if not actual loss. Our men at home are idle, and while they are idle, men abroad are occupied in supplying us with goods. Our unrivaled home market for the farmer has also greatly suffered because those who constitute it—the great army of American wage-earners—are without the work and wages they formerly had. If they can not earn wages they can not buy products. They can not earn if they have no employment, and when they do not earn, the farmer’s home market is lessened and impaired, and the loss is felt by both producer and consumer. The loss of earning power alone in this country in the past three years is sufficient to have produced our unfortunate business situation. If our labor was well employed, and employed at as remunerative wages as in 1892, in a few months every farmer in the land would feel the glad change in the increased demand for products and in the better prices which he would receive. NOT OPEN MINTS, BUT OPEN MILLS. It is not an increase in the volume of money -which is the need of.the time, but an increase in the volume of business. Not an increase of coin, but an increase of confidence. Not more coinage, but a more active use of the money coined. Not open mints for the unlimited coinage of the silver of the world, but open mills for the full and unrestricted labor of American workingmen. Tae employment of our mints for the coinage of the silver of the world would not bring the necessaries and 12
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