United States to maintain the gold standard. It is the recognized and sole standard of the great commercial nations of the world, with which we trade more largely than any other. Eighty-foui; per cent, of our foreign trade for the fiscal year 1895 was with gold standard countries, and our trade with other countries was settled on a gold basis. WE NOW HAVE MORE SILVER THAN GOLD. Chiefly by means of legislation during and since 1878 there has been put in circulation more than $624,000,000 of silver, or its representative. This has been done in the honest effort to give to silver, if possible, the same bullion and coinage value, and encourage the concurrent use of both gold and silver as money. Prior to that time there had been less than nine millions of silver dollars coined in the entire history of the United States, a period of eighty-nine years. This legislation secures the largest use of silver consistent with financial safety and the pledge to maintain its parity with gold. We have today more silver than gold. This has been accomplished at times with grave peril to the public credit. The so-called Sherman law sought to use all the silver product of the United States for money at its market value. From 1890 to 1893 the Government purchased 4,500,000 ounces of silver a month, or 54,000,000 ounces a year. This was one-third of the product of the world and practically all of this country’s product. It was believed by those who then and now favor free coinage that such use of silver would advance its bullion value to its coinage value, but this expectation was not realized. In a few months, notwithstanding the unprecedented market for the silver produced in the United States, the price of silver went down very rapidly, reaching a lower point than ever before. Then, upon the recommendation of President Cleveland, both political parties united in the repeal of the purchasing clause of the Sherman law. We can not with safety engage in further experiments in this direction. THE DOUBLE STANDARD. On the 22nd of August, 1891, in a public address, I said: “If we could have an international ratio, which all the leading nations of the world would adopt, and the true relation be fixed between the two metals, and all agree upon the quantity of silver, which should constitute a dollar, then silver would be as free and unlimited in its privileges of coinage as gold is to-day. But that we have not been able to secure, and with the free and unlimited coinage of silver adopted in the United States, at the present ratio, we would be still further removed from any international agreement. We'may never be able to secure it if we enter upon the isolated coinage of silver. The double standard implies equality at a ratio, and that equality can only be established by the concurrent law of nations. It was the concurrent law of nations that made the double standard; it will require the concurrent law of nations to reinstate and sustain it.” IT FAVORS THE USE OF SILVER MONEY. The Republican Party has not been, and is not now, opposed to the use of silver money, as its record abundantly shows. It has done all that could be done for its increased use, with safety and honor, 6
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