and to employ such other effective means as may be necessary to these
ends. The authority should include the power to sell bonds on long and
short time, as conditions may require, and should provide for a rate
of interest lower than that fixed by the act of January 14, 1875.
While there is now no commercial fright which withdraws gold from the
Government, but, on the contrary, such widespread confidence that gold
seeks the Treasury demanding paper money in exchange, yet the very
situation points to the present as the most fitting time to make
adequate provision to insure the continuance of the gold standard and of
public confidence in the ability and purpose of the Government to meet
all its obligations in the money which the civilized world recognizes
as the best. The financial transactions of the Government are conducted
upon a gold basis. We receive gold when we sell United States bonds and
use gold for their payment. We are maintaining the parity of all the
money issued or coined by authority of the Government. We are doing
these things with the means at hand. Happily at the present time we are
not compelled to resort to loans to supply gold. It has been done in the
past, however, and may have to be done in the future. It behooves us,
therefore, to provide at once the best means to meet the emergency when
it arises, and the best means are those which are the most certain and
economical. Those now authorized have the virtue neither of directness
nor economy. We have already eliminated one of the causes of our
financial plight and embarrassment during the years 1893, 1894, 1895,
and 1896. Our receipts now equal our expenditures; deficient revenues
no longer create alarm. Let us remove the only remaining cause by
conferring the full and necessary power on the Secretary of the Treasury
and impose upon him the duty to uphold the present gold standard and
preserve the coins of the two metals on a parity with each other, which
is the repeatedly declared policy of the United States.