experience shows that labor and land are the last to feel the change in
monetary standards, and the same resistance will be made to an advance
of wages on the silver standard as on the gold standard, and when the
advance is won it will be found that the purchasing power of the new
dollar is less than the old. No principle of political economy is better
established than that the producing classes are the first to suffer and
the last to gain by monetary changes.

I might apply this argument to the farmer, the merchant, the
professional man, and to all classes except the speculator or the
debtor who wishes to lessen the burden of his obligations; but it is not
necessary.

It is sometimes said that all this is a false alarm, that our demand
for silver will absorb all that will be offered and bring it to par with
gold at the old ratio. I have no faith in such a miracle. If they really
thought so, many would lose their interest in the question. What they
want is a cheaper dollar that would pay debts easier. Others do not
want either silver or gold, but want numbers, numerals, the fruit of
the printing-press, to be fixed every year by Congress as we do an
appropriation bill.

Now, sir, I am willing to do all I can with safety even to taking great
risks to increase the value of silver to gold at the old ratio, and
to supply paper substitutes for both for circulation, but there is
one immutable, unchangeable, ever-existing condition, that the paper
substitute must always have the same purchasing power as gold and
silver coin, maintained at their legal ratio with each other. I feel a
conviction, as strong as the human mind can have, that the free coinage
of silver now by the United States will be a grave mistake and a