with more brutal effrontery than by Harcourt. The American silver party will find Harcourt's speech the best campaign document. A producer who reads this speech and does not vote for Bryan cuts his own throat. In order to prevent some of this moral suicide, I quote a few characteristic phrases. Said the leader of the English Liberals:

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'England has been called the land of Shylocks. Nobody who was present will forget the memorable speech delivered by Mr. Gladstone in this House on this same question, in which he submitted to the world's ridicule the proposition that this land of money-lenders should go from country to country, hat in hand, begging that we should be paid ten shillings for a pound.

""This is practically the goal to which bimetallism would lead us. (Hear, hear!) Of course, we are told that we shall receive more money. The truth is that we are paid not in gold, but in goods. It is out of this merchandise that our people make their living, and now it is expected of us that we shall go around the world begging that we shall receive less merchandise for our gold. Can anything more ridiculous be suggested? (Hear, hear!) We, who have lent hundreds, nay, thousands of millions to foreign nations, shall ask them that for this money they shall give us less in return than we now receive. (Hear!)'

"With this speech, Shylock Harcourt has laid bare the kernel of the whole matter. Shall producers pay double value in goods or not? The English creditor grows rich while his American victim goes to ruin.

"When once it becomes fully understood in London that Bryan is bound to enact the free silver coinage, without the permission of the Stock Exchange, will not the fear of the decrease of American values bring about the city's conversion? Then Balfour will follow his bimetallic convictions and in that case all Europe is conquered.

"It is self-evident that the American people desire to be as independent of the manipulators of the bourses of New York and Chicago as they must be absolutely free of the conditions that govern speculation in Berlin and London. So-called silver fanaticism, of which we hear so much, is really but a protest against shady bourse manipulations that threaten the small man year in and year out.

"The American silver party, if it means to do its full duty, must not be content to break the gold monopoly, but must also put an end to the fluctaations of the value of silver. This should be accomplished as follows: Immediately after Bryan assumes his office the Government of the United States should ask the powers of Europe whether they desire a mutual understanding with reference to free coinage. The powers will not be long in formulating requests and submitting propositions by whose adoption all contracting parties will gain.

"Thus it may come about that international bimetallism and the best possible solution of the financial and economical problems of the day will be the ultimate results of Bryan's and the people's victory.

"But how will it be should McKinley be elected? Nothing could act more disastrously on the American standard. Only Bryan can save the American standard by an international understanding.

"The honest money party overlooks the fact that the present American standard is endangered more by causes emanating from itself than by Bryan. It is true that the banks are just now heaping up the coin of the Treasury, contrary to their usual ways, without compensation.

"This may proceed for some time, but should McKinley be well installed they will remember the nice little profits of the Cleveland bond issues and 'get even.'

"Does any one believe that Wall Street gives up its gold so unselfishly? The aim is to keep up the single standard, for, should November pronounce its doom, silver would, as money, be decidedly 'sounder' than paper, with a gold premium.

"How will McKinley seek to combat the chronic standard crisis? protective tariff?

With a

"In case a protective tariff shall be enforced, the income of the Government will be lessened since the imports will be reduced. Look, then, also, as under Cleveland, for another syndicate which will be asked to play the guardian angel role over the standard, and the American people will contribute more millions for the redemption of currency, thus playing into the hands of the money-lenders and lowering the prices of all products.

"Bryan has a money programme, but how is McKinley's? With the simple promise to maintain the gold value of the standard nothing can be effected. By what means can this be done? McKinley and his party must confess that the only means acceptable to the American people would be international bimetallism.

"The sound money party, therefore, can not save the gold standard. If McKinley be victorious, it is doomed. Unless his prohibitive tariff bugaboo will bring Europe to terms with us, the alternative is McKinley tariff or Bryan free silver; in America it is McKinley coercion or Bryan silver. 'Incidit in Scyllam qui vuit evitare Charydbin.'

"This is silver's revenge!

"It is really edifying to see how our European capitalistic free trade and gold press raves over the arch tariff fiend, McKinley. You see, on this side of the Atlantic, the silver question is recognized as paramount by capitalisni. On the other hand, Mr. Bryan has the sympathies of the producing classes of all European lands in this campaign.

"You are fighting the battle of labor against the bourse, the battle of the farmer against the speculator.

"The victory of Bryan will be the beginning of the peaceful solution of the social questions, not through Utopian revolutionary schemes, but through a healthy economic policy for the maintenance and strengthening of the working and producing classes." "OTTO ARENDT."

Mr. Moreton Frewen.

(From the St. Louis Post-Dispatch, July 2.)

"Sir: Your interesting leader of the 21st upon the currency situation in the United States may be shortly summed up in the following theses: 1. That no legislation by the United States, single handed, can establish a parity

between gold and silver. 2. That the free coinage of silver in the United States involves silver monometallism. 3. That gold monometallism is to be preferred to silver monometallism. Now, in the opinion of the silver party in the United States, if (1) is sound, then (2) an honest silver currency, such as Germany had until 1873 and India until 1893, is infinitely preferable to (3) an appreciating gold currency, even if-which is more than doubtfulthat gold currency can be maintained at all. As a general statement of the financial position of the United States it may be said that she owes annually these interest payments: $150,000,000 on loans, $75,000,000 remittances to travelers and absentees, $75,000,000 to foreign ship-owners; so that either her exports have to exceed her imports by £60,000,000 sterling or she loses gold, or, failing this, she has to borrow to pay the interest, thus piling higher the permanent interest charges.

"I venture to think that the debts of this nation of 70,000,000 people are even larger than I have stated them. The general condition of financiai strain and consequent political unrest in the United States seems to be Hot less than is now the case in Austria, where the annual interest paid abroad by 4,000,000 people is known to be some £15,000,000 sterling. If we take, for example, the State of California-this State is in population, in resources and climate, about the peer of New South Wales. The annual iudebtedness of New South Wales is officially stated at £5,000,000 sterling. May not the debt of California to New York and to Europe be about the same? and, if so, how can California any more than New South Wales permanently sustain the burden of a 50 per cent. fall of prices, which fall must have exactly doubled the burden of her external debt? Thus the one issue in the United States-which includes the other issues, such as the mere color of her money and the fiscal methods by which her revenue shall be collected-the one paramount issue, is this:

"How can the United States secure a sufficient balance of exports over imports to continue solvent?'

"Now, I contend that if, as you admit to be the case the world over, a depreciating currency stimulates exports and contracts imports, then that portion of public opinion in America which favors silver rather than gold is intelligent. For, scheme and readjust and tinker with the tariffs as you will, you can not make a silk purse out of such a sow's ear; you can not restore the balance of trade to the United States unless her currency legislation is such that it drags up the exchanges between Europe and Asia; whereas every further movement in America or elsewhere toward gold mo nometallism drags those exchanges down. In short, gold monometallisin in the United States involves an increased competition for the industries of white men everywhere, at the hands of the yellow races of the Orient; and there is not a consular report which comes to us from the far East but em phasizes this statement. What, then, is the argument for single-handed free coinage in the United States? It is this: Either free coinage will establish bimetallism for the whole world, or, failing this, there will be such a gold

premium in New York as to-day assists exporters in Russia, in all Asia, and in nine-tenths of South America.

"This gold premium, unlike a protective tariff, will stimulate the exports of the United States while acting, just as a protective tariff does, to reduce inports; therefore, either free coinage will give bimetallism to the whole world, or, failing this, it will tend to secure that excess of American exports over imports, which is the only possible alternative to further gold loans, leading up to ultimate insolvency. These, then, are the arguments which favor a non-appreciating, or even a depreciating, currency in the United States. On the other hand, I do not see in its economic aspects what possible advantage can accrue from a gold standard and a gold currency. A gold currency in America can not raise, it can not, indeed, fail to further depress the European exchanges with 800,000,000 of Asiatic exporters. It can not, therefore, fail to still further throw the balance of trade against the United States, unless, indeed, by further contracting the American currency it forces down prices there to such a point as to contract violently America's import trades. And a pretty lookout for England that! In short, the clamor of our press that America shall become gold monometallic seems to involve either the insolvency of our greatest debtor or the decline of our export trades to America, or both.

"There is this further point which you emphasize that if America copies our gold standard 'confidence will be restored' and we will lend her more money, thus aggravating in the future the very disease from which she suffers. On the other hand, if she goes to free coinage we shall, in a panic, return her securities and thus sell her back her railways and industrials at half price, just at that very moment when, her legislation having sent the rupee, the tael, and the yen to nearly, or quite par, the export trades of the Orient will be cut into, and the exports of the American farm, miue. and factory will take their place. In other words, because of the inane injunctions of a portion of the London press, our investors there will be so misled as to sell American stocks to Americans at that very moment when in America prosperity is about to set in. You remark that I describe America as 'the greatest debtor nation on earth,' and you add, 'that one fact is conclusive against taking any course tending to lower its national credit.' But would 'free silver' lower its credit, even should it involve a gold premium? It certainly would not, if trade and agriculture there improved and the railways did a larger business at better rates. The credit of a country is not determined by its currency but by its prosperity. Thus India's credit, the rate at which she borrows, has greatly improved side by side with the depreciation of her currency. So, also, has Russia's. Of the Argentine and Brazil it is not too much to say that inconvertible paper issues, and the stimulus thus afforded their exports because of depreciation, has alone enabled these countries to continue paying the interest on their foreign loans. And what is lacking in the United States is not really the lender's confidence in the currency; it is rather the conviction of both borrower and lender that

money invested in a farm or factory will earn no profit; that the pains and perils of a fresh 'resumption' period are just ahead, and that while prices over there are even now depressed below the point of possible profit, they must be depressed 25 per cent. further yet before imports, under any tariff can be so checked as to permit gold to remain at home in the currency. And further than this, let me ask how, if imports are to be checked by a high tariff, is the necessary revenue to be secured for the Federal Government.

"If, then, as I believe, the critical position of the United States results from the present conditions of exchange between Europe and Asia, and can only be remedied by some action which will raise those exchanges, much may be said for the policy of free silver, even should that policy involve a gold premium in New York. It is not the exporter from America who will be hurt by that premium; it is the exporter to America-in other words, the English manufacturer. But let me go further, and ask your reasons for believing that the United States is unable to maintain the parity of 1 to 16, assuming, as we may assume, that if the American mints open to the free coinage of dollars, we shall open mints again to the free coinage of rupees Are there any scientific grounds for the conviction, so generally held, that such a monetary union as this bimetallism in America and silver monometallism in India would fail to maintain the world's parity? I do not venture, of course, to dogmatize as to this; but the problem is so interesting and the experiment by the United States-whether next year or in 1901-is so extremely probable that it is worth while for those who hold the experiment would be attended with disaster to offer something for our consideration more convincing than prophecies.

"In the first place, then, free coinage in America would bring the Asiatic exchanges promptly to par-for the moment, at least-and, assuming that you are right, and that there would be panic sales of American securities held here, perhaps £40,000,000 sterling of American gold would flow into Europe. This great flood of gold would be likely to inflate prices here to some extent, to thus increase the exports from the United States, and also to reduce the gold premium at Buenos Ayres and elsewhere, thus checking exports of wheat, etc., which compete with similar exports from America. And, again, the prodigious rise in the exchange with Asia would expand European exports to Asia, and, until gold prices here had risen, would greatly contract exports from Asia to Europe. Thus a double influence favorable to the balance of trade in the United States would be exerted. The United States would export more to England because Asia would export less, and thus America's gold, as well as her securities, would go back to her. Secondly, because England, selling more goods to Asia, the rupee, the dollar, and the yen being at par, England could then also buy more produce from the United States. Thus, while free coinage in the United States might, in the first place, tend to displace gold, there would almost simultaneously be exerted an even more powerful tendency for gold to be shipped west from Europe in order to liquidate what it seems to me must be an immense trade balance in favor of the United States. As to the ab